The Roads to Rome
by Ballooney
Summary: "In the crazy universe where I look like my undead mother, it took Jacob Black five seconds to irrevocably change everything. Ever since then, it's taken me a hundred times that to just take a piss." In spite of the twists in the road, though, all roads lead to Rome - to a place where "he and I are bound together like Bert and Ernie." BD, Post-BD AU.
1. The Anatomy of the Spine

As of July 21st, with the kind help of Nise7465, the first installment of The Roads to Rome has been slightly modified to include one important detail about Nessie's daily life. All plot elements, and the large majority of the text, remain the same.

* * *

"The spine is a bundle of millions of nerves - the fibers in of which are as thick as a human finger."

Carl J. Banner, my anatomy teacher, raises one porky finger as if to illustrate his point. Mr. Banner is an aging man with a large bald spot in the back of his head, and two tufts of orange hair. From pictures I've seen in old yearbooks – Banner is an alumnus of the school he teaches in– he used to be quite a charmer. The abdominals of his youth have yielded to a massive beer belly. As if to illustrate why, the stench of a half-eaten burger paired up with stale fries permeates the air.

"The nerves carrying information _to _the brain are called sensory neurons. They carry information to the brain about pain, temperature and touch. Contrariwise…"

Around me, there are tiny grunts of confusion, inaudible to the human ear. Banner described the anatomy of the ear in a lecture in September of last year. I recall every detail of it perfectly. My peers wonder if this word, _contrariwise_, is a new anatomy term. In front of me, Cassidy Anthony's brow is furrowed in confusion.

"Is that a word?" Cassidy asks her sidekick, in an un-hushed whisper. The sidekick, a girl named Rachel Geller, shrugs her shoulders.

I wonder about Rachel. From what I've gathered, she doesn't smoke pot, but there's an airy, dopey quality to her voice. It suggests that as an infant, she inhaled pot fumes before she inhaled air. The things she says confirm that theory even more so. On the day of her birthday, she announced to this very table, "I just realized the day of my birthday is the day I was born!" I wasn't very well-acquainted with Rachel at that point, so I laughed at her humor. Looking back, I realize I ought to have been laughing at her stupidity.

"It's a conjunction, Cass," I tell her, to give Cassidy something else to puzzle over. She sneers at me evilly. Immediately thereafter, Cassidy nods, as though she knows what a conjunction is.

"…Motor neurons carry messages _to _the muscles from the brain, dictating movement…"

"I didn't ask _you, _Cullen," she snarls. I bite my bottom lip to keep from laughing at her.

It's a big change from our relationship last school year, when Cassidy decided to take me under her evil wing and cushion me in her hard-earned power. By December, I'd decided I was sick of Cassidy's shit, and our short-lived love story ended. Ever since, she and I have exchanged snide comments. When I win with wit, Cassidy looks at me like she wants to rip my head off, and I respond by laughing.

"…and breathing."

At the front of the room, Mr. Banner's beady little eyes nervously scan the room. They land on me and linger there for a couple of seconds. Beads of sweat gather around his wrinkled forehead. From across the room, I can hear the fastening thump of his heart. It typically beats in a slow, rhythmic drumming, as his blood struggles to push through his pork-clogged arteries. For somebody educated in the biology of heart disease, he sure eats a lot of Twinkies. I can smell the stash of it on the cabinet where he stores textbooks.

Banner is _nervous, _I realize, even though that is his chronic state. The man is perpetually terrified of having his limited, hard-earned authority challenged. He typically lectures us in a thunderous voice, as though he thinks he's the President delivering the State of the Union to Congress. At the same time, Banner's voice has the breathy quality of a constipated Donald Duck. The irony is that he _really _does think his words are god's gift to humanity, and he delivers them accordingly. He has no qualms about showing us that he thinks he shouldn't be teaching. In his authoritarian mind's eye, we're all an insult to his intelligence. At the same time, Banner deliciously enjoys picking on innocent, if slightly mentally challenged, teenagers. His eyes light up like Chucky coming alive when he finds an excuse for punishment. I think the State of New York did a good thing in denying him a medical license. He'd have the bedside manner of Dr. House and an oblivious toddler.

This time, however, he is nervous in the biological sense of the word. Suddenly, I realize it's because he thinks this is a delicate topic. We've been talking about the spine, and since mine was crushed like an eggshell, Banner fears the subject might make me wail like teenage girls during re-runs of Titanic. Banner's beady, rat-like eyes are lingering on the wheelchair I'm sitting on. The thump of his heart grows erratic. Most people, including myself, land in wheelchairs thanks to damage to the spine. Banner doesn't know of that the damage _I_ sustained wasn't of the garden variety, and not because thoracic injuries are rare. The specifics would give his heart a real reason to pound erratically. Touched by his tact, however, I give him a small smile – as if to urge him on. Then I return to the doodles on my note-book.

"The spinal cord is surrounded by the vertebral column. It is also encased by CFS, a fluid meant to cushion the delicate aforementioned nerves meant to protect it from banging," Banner continues. My seventeen-year-old classmates burst into gregarious giggles, like 12-year-olds looking at their first stash of _Playboys_. I roll my eyes a little, and continue gnawing on my lips. Mr. Banner's potato-shaped head turns the color of a tomato.

"Everybody stop," Cass says authoritatively in her little girl voice, "and listen to Mr. Banner."

Cassidy Anthony has built her web of power through two techniques. One of them has been to glue her bee-stung lips to the asses of St. Mary Margaret's faculty. Otherwise pea-brained, Banner has enough of an inferiority complex that he's one of the few teachers to refuse this kind of evil tactic. It's no doubt one of the reasons why she and I were paired up as "buddies" when my family and I arrived to upstate New York. She's the President of the senior class, and regularly meets with the headmaster, Mr. Ronald Gayheart, to "act as liaison" between the student council and the head of school. I'm amazed at the fact that a man in his 50s is putty in the hands of a blonde bimbo of questionable academic intelligence, even if said bimbo is a social _genius. _I understand _how _she does it, though. I _invented _sounding all cute to play the sympathies of men older than myself.

The second pillar of her web of evil is that she's raised the hem of her skirt to go past her mid-thigh. The good sisters of St. Mary Margaret pay her no mind, even though they have mild aneurisms at the sight of a piercing outside the earlobe or messy hair. I know this is also a sign of the good sisters' hypocrisy, as they've never once asked my father or uncle – who sometimes put Billy Ray Cyrus' mullet to shame – to comb back their hair.

St. Mary Margaret, or St. Marge's as it is fondly known, is a private, Catholic institution in upstate New York. Compared to the other places where we have lived, New York State is as sunny as Florida. My uncles and father decided that Catholicism and a band of post-menopausal nuns would protect me from doing the dance with no pants. Daddy decided it was best not to enroll me at the nearby St. Olaf, an all-girls school. The penis embargo, Daddy surmised, included his own. He preferred being with me - amid a sea of "disgusting little cretins" - than without me. Without them to terrorize a band of teenage boys, Daddy and the Uncles trusted Father Benedict's violent sermons against the evils of pre-marital sex would protect me from engaging in them. Of course, nobody considered the possibility that _I _would want to do something. (Last time that thought flitted to my head, Daddy had the vampire-equivalent of a stroke).

Having dodged the bullet – talking about spinal protection mechanisms in front of someone whose mechanisms weren't enough - , Banner proceeds. He doesn't linger on the lovely subject of mechanisms to protect the spinal cord, nor does he bitch out Cassidy.

Instead, he plunges right into the fascinating topic of the myelin sheath. He writes out the two words powerfully, and underlines them for emphasis. The marker screeches under the weight of his porky, red fist. The hairs on the back of my neck rise.

"These two words will be your worst nightmare, people," Banner says in a breathy voice. His words dance with ill-concealed glee. "I won't expect any of you to understand, even if you do pursue a career in pre-med and biochemistry, as I myself did."

There's a chorus of well-hidden snickers. Banner tries to pretend like he forewent a career in medicine because he would be a fantastic biochemist. We all know better.

Immediately, Banner launches into a "lecture".

From then on, Banner only pauses for emphasis only when he's about to say something particularly difficult, beaming as if to say, "See, little fuckers? I understand, and yet all of _you _don't."

He throws jumbled pieces of information out as fast as he can. Beads of his over-eager saliva sprinkle the entirety of the first row. He continues rattling on, throwing words in like a contestant on Pyramid.

Banner is the living proof that "those who can't do, teach," is the most inaccurate statement in the universe – right after the bullshit Banner spews out during his Pyramid-like lecture. There's a skill to teaching, to weaving lines between each concept. After twenty minutes of it, even I find myself brain dead.

* * *

The shrill ring of the bell stops the lecture. Banner stops. His heart is pounding madly, air coming out of him in rapid, enthralled bursts. The scent of his blood is sweet with endorphins. His onion-sprinkled breaths come out in small huffs and puffs. Banner beams as my classmates as they file out of the room like a caravan of exhausted donkeys, having reasserted his own superiority. Outside the window, the fields are green, the sky is blue and the sun is streaming past the glass, giving my skin a glow. The blue of the sky is threatened by the first cloud cover we've seen all week. I wait for the sweaty, hungry and angry to file out before maneuvering my chair out of my desk.

It's a somewhat complicated 3-point turn. The hallway between the desks is narrow, though, and I'd stop the end-of-school traffic, which is why I wait. Even at sixteen, there are some classmates of mine who huff impatiently if I slow them down as I maneuver through the minefield of chairs and desks. I wait for all of them to leave to be able to do it in peace. Traffic is heavier out in the hallways, and people are _buzzing _with the desire to leave. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to maneuver through that if I wasn't an undead look-alike of a Disney Princess. Even with that ethereal beauty about me, I get hit by wayward backpacks and shoved everywhere by douches – when I happen to be alone to do it.

Buzz Hemlich, the linebacker of the football team, and Jason Lafferty are waiting outside the Anatomy classroom – evidently for me. They do it to "protect me." Most of the time, comments such as those makes me turn red. Sometimes, it's a blush because I find it sweet in a goofy kind of way. Others, I turn red with anger. Where Buzz is concerned, I'm either filled with a desire to slap Buzz in the face or to squeeze him like a big teddy bear.

"Wanna go, babe?" he says, giving me a sly grin.

"For the 100th time, Buzz, don't call me 'babe'," I snap. Emmett says he wants to "beat the shit" out of Buzz, because nobody should call me "babe" without my consent. I told him not to, because to "beat the shit out of somebody" out of irritation is just as bad as calling them babe without their consent. My Aunt Rose went for the shallow route of "You'd have to beat all of the boys in that building," beaming with self-satisfaction.

"Whatever you say, gorgeous," Buzz tries again. I inhale sharply. "Although I guess you've told me not to call you that, too, huh?"

"One thousand two-hundred and sixty-four times," I mutter. He laughs. He thinks I'm being funny. How I wish I _was. _

Buzz grabs on to the handles of the chair to push me as soon as I'm out of the classroom. Last time he tried to do that in my father's presence, my father bruised his knuckles. Even that hasn't deterred him. The fact that he _worries _about me is what keeps me from reacting like my father does. Buzz is genuinely worried about my wellbeing to the point of going past an angry, brokenhearted and grieving vampire to do it. As for me, it wouldn't take me much effort to pry Buzz's large hands off the handles. It would be as easy as picking daisies. Last time I did it, though, Buzz's face fell as though as if I'd kicked his puppy – and I felt like a raging bitch.

"I can get it, Buzz," I say sweetly, almost kindly.

"You'll tire out your arms," he says quietly, almost tenderly. I resist the urge to point out that there's nothing wrong with my arms. Then again, Buzz isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Of course, it _flatters _me that he feels protective over me, as misguided as it is. My cheeks flame, even as I roll my eyes at him. There are coils of butterflies in my stomach, even though I don't find Buzz attractive. I understand _why _people would. He's well-muscled, burly even, with electric blue eyes and well-trimmed blonde hair. Even then, I smile a little with self-satisfaction at the thought that he chose me over the many bimbos of St. Marge's – even though I think he's of average intellect at best and his type of good looks don't float my boat.

I deserve a first-class ticket to Hell.

The first time he saw me, Buzz Hemlich said I had the "most beautiful eyes he'd ever seen." There was a little drool hanging from his lips and his mouth was open. He made me laugh, and ever since, I've been partial to Buzz. The mossy, bright emerald green color of my eyes I got from my father's gene pool – he found Buzz' comment mortifying. My father says that my eyes have their "character" from my mother, whatever the fuck that means. If I didn't know any better, I'd think my father was on high-quality weed.

My friend Simon explained it once, though.

"They make you look all cute and innocent," Simon explained once, "And then you open your mouth and the illusion dies. You're what happens when a Disney Princess meets a grumpy old geezer with a stick up their ass. Plus, you sound like Wanda Sykes."

Loud guffaws erupted from my family's table. Emmett Cullen _fell _out of his cafeteria seat, nearly breaking it, struggling to breathe. It was a miracle he didn't blow our cover in that very second; anybody laughing that hard should have been the color of my Aunt Rose's lipstick. Tears should've been rolling out of his eyes. As he _wheezed _with maniacal laughter_, _he clung to his abdomen as if his stomach would spill out. People were too shocked too notice his body wasn't on par with his laughter.

There was far more irony to Simon's words than one would think. I really love that boy, I do. Emmett was laughing at the irony more so than at the description of my character. Regardless, he's been calling me Wanda when I sass him out, and starts bellowing like cattle whenever Wanda Sykes is on television, beckoning me to her.

Everything about my face and its arrangement screams "delicate", from a long, swan-like neck; a delicate chin in a heart-shaped face; a pert little nose with a very delicate tip; dimples on peach-colored cheeks; all the way to big, doe-like eyes framed by thick black eyelashes. I understand why sometimes, Buzz Hemlich – or Kyle Mueller, Kevin de Praeter and Alejandro Martinez, if and when they're on weed – touches me like I'm made of porcelain, staring at me with their mouths hanging open. The attention works like a little thrill, running across my veins and heating up my blood with a dark sense of self-satisfaction. The little thrill, the sense of flattery, is what keeps me allowing Buzz to escort me places even though I have no intention of indulging his silly fantasies.

Like I said, I would be gal-pals with the evil stepmother from Snow White.

Simon is waiting for me in front of my locker when I get there. Buzz is holding the handles of the chair even though I'm pushing the wheels as a mechanism to nurse my ego. People give us a wide berth, keeping book-bags and shoves away. There are rumors circulating that Buzz and I are dating, even though Buzz and I are yet to discuss anything other than football play-offs.

Simon arches an eyebrow when he sees us. I glare at him, shrugging my shoulders to indicate my mortification. As I open the door to my locker, Buzz drops the chair's handles and starts running his large fingers through my ponytail. Aunt Rose insists on putting ribbons in my hair like I'm in the third grade. I snatch the mahogany-colored ponytail from his fingers with enough force to rip it out of my skull.

"This isn't the 1950s, Buzz," Simon says. "Get off her."

My love for Simon flares up inside my heart like fireworks on the 4th of July. I love that boy. I really do. My father, my Uncles – _and _goddamned Buzz – all resort to physical strength to "protect me." Simon uses dry wit. Also, it must take a shitload of guts to stand up to Buzz Hemlich – he's almost seven feet tall and built like a blonde, puberty-ridden Schwarzenegger. Gangly and skinny, Simon is 5"8. He wears skinny gray jeans and a two pairs of converse, which drive the good sisters of St. Marge absolutely insane. His tousled, caramel colored hair hangs down his head and brushes his shoulders, obscuring a pair of honey-colored eyes.

"Who's going to make me, cocksucker?" Buzz demands, rising to his full height. Above me, Buzz's ham-sized arms shoot out to slam Simon against the locker doors.

Angry, I snap. I turn the chair far more quickly than I should've – any faster, and I would've pivoted out of the chair with the force of the spin. I have hurt the rubber on the chair's wheels from manhandling it. I look up at Buzz, my eyes blazing, and I shove him backwards with the palm of my hand. It meets his abdomen hard, but not hard enough to make him wince. I am supposed to be a human female weighing 110 pounds.

"Buzz, you're _such_ an idiot!" I cry angrily.

"Aw, Nessie, don't get mad," he begs. Buzz takes my hand in his sweaty palm, caressing the knuckles. I wrench it free. Looking at him with all the disappointment I can muster, I shake my head and spin the chair around towards the locker.

"Twinkle-toes knows that I don't mean any harm," Buzz tries again, in an attempt at a good-natured joke. I don't need to turn around to know his eyes are pleading at me and shooting daggers at my best friend.

"Fuck off," Simon snaps.

"Using a nickname from the 6th grade isn't helping your case," I snarl. I fling my locker door open with so much force the freshman besides me jumps up in fright. Furiously, I stick my anatomy textbook inside the locker and take out my trench-coat.

"Yours? I didn't know you didn't like it when people call you Nessie," Buzz says stupidly. What is worse, he's oblivious to the cruelty inherent in bullying Simon like an ape in the zoo or a pimple-ridden 7th grader.

"Ugh." My statement is colored with sickened disgust.

"Not that, fuckhead," Justin tells Buzz in a whisper. Neither of them suspect I'm able to hear, three feet below Buzz' ear. "Twinkle-toes."

I pinch the bridge of my nose. Mentally, I run through the materials I need to take home. As I stuff them in my purse-like knapsack, Justin finally speaks up.

"Listen, Ness, there's a bonfire at my place tonight after the game," Jason offers. I begin chugging down on my lip. I hate games, not necessarily because I hate watching sports. In fact, Uncle Emmett has made me a stark raving mad fan of ESPN, and Dad has made me a worshipper of the Chicago White Sox.

"Where are you playing?"

"FDR High," Justin replies tentatively.

Put simply, I hate the bleachers. The field at FDR High isn't accessible, what with no wheelchair ramps. To make matters worse, the trek from the parking lot to the field is filled with gravel, which means I can't push myself and have to be pushed around. I feel bad for whoever is stuck doing it – usually Simon – and the embarrassment is gigantic. Wheelchairs and bleachers aren't compatible either, such that it's usually necessary to carry me up there – which leaves me 100% at the mercy of whoever does the carrying. That alone makes me more uncomfortable than discussing Aunt Flo with my grandfather. The icing on the cake is that I can't sit up unsupported and have to hold up my weight the entire game, which is more uncomfortable than tiring.

"Isn't it a bit rude not to invite Simon, too, Justin?" I say snappishly.

Like I said, Maleficent and I would be besties. I give zero shits about Justin's manners; it's just easier to act self-righteous than to go into all of the above. That's my _personal _shit. Simon is glaring at me as though as if he wants to strangle me with his bare hands. Spending hours around a bonfire drinking cheap beer with the football team and their entourage is not his idea of fun. Neither is mine, as much as I occasionally Buzz's enjoy Buzz' worshipping, so I'm using Simon as bait. Really, I'm a top candidate for martyrdom.

"Yeah, Lowell can come, too," Justin offers, without sparing Simon a glance.

"I'd love to go, Lafferty," Simon says sardonically, as I continue to gnaw on my lips. Aunt Rose _hates _it when I do that.

Guilt nudges me in the stomach. I ignore her. Instead, I fling around to hang my knapsack from the chair handles. I hate the thing, preferring a sturdy backpack by miles. However, Buzz and others like him insisted on carrying it for me, oblivious to the fact that it hung from the back of my chair. If they knew about the _personal _stuff housed within it, they would probably drop it like a hot potato. Luckily, I didn't need to share any of it with them - they became aware of this fact once my backpack was replaced by a feminine, leather-bound purse.

"Thanks for the invite, Justin," I say sweetly. "I'll think about it."

Forcing me to pinch the bridge of my nose for the 4th time in a day, Buzz adds desperately, "Please come, baby, please."

"Holy mother of Jesus, Buzz!" I cry, furious. In my head, I hear my grandfather say, _Don't take the lord's name in vain! _I ignore him. "Stop calling me _baby_, or _babe_, or whatever else it is you pull out of your ass."

I mumble the last part. Tugging on Simon's sleeve, I roll away from Buzz. The latter boy calls me, begging like a lost puppy, but I don't turn around to look. I'm torn between feeling like a raging bitch, and complimenting myself for my assertiveness. I hate Buzz for treating me like I'm made of glass, even when it upsets me that he's not trudging after me.

I'm in desperate need of a shrink.

"I need to go to the bathroom," I tell Simon once we're far away from Buzz. It's a lie; I don't _need _to go to the bathroom, as I can't feel the urge. In fact I've _never_ felt the urge, in the same way that I have never feel anything from below the chest. However, I do need to go through the romantic notion of "emptying the bladder. " There's no need to tell Simon all the details of what that entails. It's better to leave everyone thinking I'm a Disney Princess and that I have the bodily functions of one.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Lowell," I tell him.

"Nice try, Cullen," he says. "You're not off the hook. We still need to talk about that snake pit at Lafferty's."

"It'll be fun," I try, in a falsely saccharine voice, emulating Cassidy. "We can braid each other's hair and talk about how great we are."

When Simon _finally_ gives me a half-hearted grin, I enter the girls' bathroom. St. Marge's renovated the entire first floor to make it _accessible _instead of "accessible" the summer before we enrolled. Even then, it's far from perfect. I wash my hands first, even though I'll use hand-sanitizer again. I have to back up the chair against the sink to be able to pull the door open, and even then it's a bit of a struggle to squeeze into the stall. The stall is nowhere _near _accessible. My family was ready to bitch out the school some more until I pointed out I don't need to get off the chair to use them. Next summer, they'll change it, in case a student comes along that does.

The first thing I do to get situated. I pull my knapsack off the back of my chair and hang it. Thanks to Rose, the school installed a hook on the wall next to where I park my chair. The brilliant handyman – as most handymen are where wheelchairs are concerned - hung it high, but I manage, however uncomfortably. Conveniently, when un-zippered, the front of the bag drops down providing a clean place for me to work. I'm able to work out of my bag, protecting my catheter supplies from the breeding ground for germs that this bathroom is.

Once all my supplies are laid out, I lock the chair brakes and lift myself up enough to pull up my uniform skirt and lower my stockings. One at a time, I lift my feet by my thick stockings, and place them on the rim of the toilet seat. Situated, I pull out a hand sanitizer wipe and clean my hands. A tiny make-up mirror gets propped up conveniently by my panties, allowing me to guide the extending catheter tube into my urethra to relieve myself. I can't feel the tube, or the relief that accompanies the draining of my bladder. Yet I do feel a familiar tinge of relief as soon as the catheter's begins to fill with urine – like a little burst of satisfaction people get when they parallel park right.

After I'm all done, the corner of the bag tears off and slowly, I empty its contents down the toilet. It doesn't sound like the typical hiss of urine as it hits the water in the commode. There are many rumors about what I do in the bathroom. Few people have the heart or the brain to stop speculating. Some Einstein thought the water falling sounded like _vomit _– which it didn't – and spread rumors I was bulimic.

Using a catheter has always been a pan in the ass, especially for me - as I'm teenaged and vain enough to find it fucking _mortifying_. Catheterizing in a public place is as awkwardly painful as waxing the va-jay-jay. God decided that since I can't feel the pain of the latter, the former must be felt. It isn't only a matter of embarrassment – as I fight back every day. If I don't void every 4 to 6 hours, I'd have accidents - and not always the run-of-the-mill pants peeing ones.

Reaching for the toilet paper makes me feel like an Olympic gymnast, but I get sufficiently cleaned up and dressed. The last thing I do before leaving the stall is to wipe down the seat so the next person isn't putting their private parts in the same place I had my dirty feet. It's probably no use, in terms of protecting some of my classmates from infection, as Cassidy is probably an incubator for genital herpes. It is, however, a courtesy to most others.

The girl washing her hands outside – how I _hate _her for her unthinking ability to piss - tries not to stare as I squeeze out of the stall. Blushing madly, I tilt my head down as I was my hands, avoiding her face desperately.

Then there are the more mature considerations to catheterizing – other than, "however idiotic my classmates are, I still don't want them to make fun of me for _this._" Until the stricter health regulations came in, it was like pulling hair to use a new, sterile catheter every time I had to piss. The iPod 5 of catheterizing was a one piece sterile unit with a lubricated tube inside a sterile collection bag. It's design eliminated the need to carry a urinal, or attempt to hit the toilet with the stream flowing from a length of rubber too short to bridge the gap. It's a pity Alice can't appreciate why it's a designer marvel.

Firstly, I stopped feeling like a little boy learning to use his little wiener when the gap was too short. Secondly, it made accidents less frequent. I couldn't _feel_ the wet spot when I miscalculated in the past, but it was _fun_ to smell it all day long – along with knowing the Adams (Cullen) family could, too. My family members are still…learning to deal with my disability even though it's been a fact of my life minutes after that life had started. They alternate between casual, medically-oriented references to my needs – which makes me feel like a petri dish – or, in Daddy's case, looking sick with pain and guilt.

Simon is waiting for me, knees drawn to his chest, drumming his fingers against his knees. The boy is such a saint. When he sees me, he smiles.

"You don't have to go to the bonfire if you don't want to," I say softly.

I grab on to his sleeve and stroke the raised bone of his wrist. The hallways are emptying out. There are a couple of people lounging near the lockers. They give us a wide berth or snicker at us as we make our way through the hallway. If people didn't find the concept of someone like _me _being a slut, I'd have the reputation for it – from Hemlich to Simon to whoever else feels indulgent. In fact, I know there aren't more people chasing after me because some of them suspect that I _can't _fuck. As Cassidy very eloquently put it once, I'm "too crippled to fuck", and that's worked as a deterrent. I try not to dwell on the fact that Cassidy may be technically right. She made me cry when I overheard her, and that's one time too many.

Outside, the sunlight is being chipped away by a cover of gray clouds. It's breezy outside. I wait to park my chair next to one of the wooden benches. Simon sits beside me. He hasn't said anything, but waits for me patiently as I slip on my cashmere sweater.

"Besides, it might rain," I add, frightened by his silence. "It might get cancelled."

Finally, he exhales – it isn't quite a sigh.

"This is the one time you might actually need protection," he finally says. I think it's meant to be a joke. It doesn't sound like one.

* * *

Later, I spot Daddy's silver-colored Audi in the distance, past the shrub and bricked fence of the parking lot. From my reflection on the gleaming front of the silver Audi, I watch my entire face light up as the corners of my lips break into a smile.

"I'll see you at the bonfire, Ness," Simon tells at the sight of the car. From behind the tinted mirror, Daddy arches one disapproving eyebrow. The look on his face says, "Hell, no." However, the chances of _those_ words coming out of his mouth are as high as the chances of Carlisle ditching medicine to become a male stripper. Against his will, Daddy smiles at the thought.

"As are the chances of you going to this _event_," Dad bites, loud and clear for my unhuman ears. He mumbles the word "event" as though I intend to go to a brothel.

At the sight of Daddy's car, Simon untwines his hand from mine from where he's been holding it. I'd been tracing circles on the back of his palm with my finger. Daddy grimaces, looking at Simon with a look that isn't quite unrestrained revulsion. It's more like stoic resignation. Daddy barks out a laugh. Letting go of my hand, Simon rises from the bench where he sits next to me, running his hand through the tousles of his hair.

"You sure you wanna come?" I ask, one final time, cocking my head to the side. "It's going to be its own form of torture." Finally, though, guilt wins its fight in my stomach. I'm not going to use Simon as an excuse to feel less miserable during the very brief spurs of time in which Buzz decides to unglue his lips from my ass.

"The things I do for you, Cullen," Simon says, laughing. Unlike at the exit, the smile reaches his eyes. He waves at me and walks away, hanging his knapsack across his chest. He waited for me to be picked up; he has his own Mini Cooper, because it's the kind of school where Rosalie's cherry red BMW doesn't look out of place.

Daddy parallel parks the car in front of the bench next to where my chair is stationed, and climbs out of the car. To my left and right, hearts begin pounding erratically, and breaths hitch in the throats of horny teenaged bitches. Typically, he'd me furious at my use of the word "bitches."

Today, he's too happy to care. Our earlier little rift is forgotten, as we both remember we haven't seen each other for a month. His smile is just as bright as mine. It never fully lights every corner of his amber eyes, but he still looks ecstatic. He squats down so I can throw my arms around him, and he squeezes me tightly to his chest.

"I missed you so much, sweetheart," he breathes, sounding almost weak with relief. It's a whisper only I can hear. "So, so much. From the moon and back. Three times over."

Being a miniature little geek, I used to be fascinated by the distance between the Earth and its satellite. It was my favorite metaphor growing up.

_I missed you too, Daddy. _My palm finds the back of his neck.

"Isn't he such a cutie?" A member of my Dad's teenaged fan-club whispers this to a girlfriend in the form of a high-pitched squeal.

I gag a little. I shoot her a nasty glare, as if questioning not only her choice in men but her mental sanity. There are people looking, everywhere – my father is the object of many a perverted, nasty-ass fantasy which I've had the misfortune of hearing. His many fan-girls stare at him as avidly as if he were an engrossing novel, forcing us both to act less upbeat. I can't bring myself to do it. Neither can he, even though he's supposed to have the self-control of a monk at the height of the dark ages. We're not supposed to be this happy to see each other. We're brother and sister, first of all. This behavior from siblings would be delightful fodder for Sigmund Freud. Second of all, I'm supposed to have seen him every day for the past month, even if my classmates haven't.

Supposedly, he came down with a heavy case of mono for the past three weeks, and went camping with my family for the sunny last week. The reality is that he left the state of New York a month ago and decided to come back yesterday.

"I'm so glad you're feeling better," I say loudly, for the sake of the teenage girls sighing their little black hearts out. He strokes my hair.

"The fresh air was reinvigorating," he replies, sounding like Emmett when he pretends to be enjoying a human meal_. _I repress the urge to slam my hand against my forehead in exasperation. Most teenagers would say, "Camping kicked ass, baby!" I roll my "big, doe-like eyes" at him.

_And the Oscar goes to Edward Cullen, _I think snidely.

He grins at me, in spite of my cheek.

"Ready to go, princess?" he asks.

Even then, his voice is somehow quiet – in the same way that Emmett has no volume other than "booming-as-if-yelling-across-a-field," Daddy's voice is always low in pitch. Next to me, a girl's eyes are glazed over at the sound. I've heard _five_ people – Cassidy included – say that they fantasize about my father "talking dirty to them." That's five people too many – and five times I've wanted to blow my brains out.

Dad smiles a crooked grin. He finds me funny. How I wish this _was funny. _

"You seem to be freezing. This sweater is too flimsy." Without another word, he takes off his coat and puts it on me like I'm three. To my left, somebody _whimpers. _Sweet Jesus.

"Da – Edward, stop," I say, slapping his hand away before slipping my hand through his coat. "Let's go."

As he walks away to open the door to the passenger side, I roll towards the curb. There's a wheelchair ramp further away, but it'd take me longer to get to it than it would for him to just lift me off out of the chair. Yet again, he squats down, and I wrap my arms around his neck. He sticks his hands under my knees and lifts me out of the chair. My legs dangle like limp noodles, practically swaying in the breeze like leaves off a willow. Daddy shoots me a disapproving glare. Around us, teenage girls _swoon_.

"He's so considerate," somebody whispers. I snort my laughter, and Dad smiles against his will.

Right along with "having him whisper 'fuck me, babe' in my ear," being carried bridal is another life aspiration for many of St. Marge's young females. I don't have to be Jasper to feel the jealousy pulsating; Alyssa Lawrence, one of Cassidy's minions-and-rivals is glaring at me. Bitches are crazy, I think. By the look on his face, Daddy's inclined to agree with me. It crosses none of their minds that neither he nor I like the situation. It kills him a little bit inside to hold me like this, legs dangling like dead weight, unresponsive.

Daddy sets me down. He tries to put on my seatbelt. I slap his hand away.

"I'm not _four," _I point out. It sounds more like banter than a snarl, and he smiles a little.

"I know, Ness," Dad says, pinching my cheek. "Old habits die hard, though."

He shuts the car door, the one thing he should do for me. I can't sit up unsupported, and it's more likely that I'll plummet out of the Audi than that I successfully close the door. Dad walks around the front of the car and folds up the chair. A girl named Kyla Suarez waves at him. He responds with a nod, and an expression worthy of a colonoscopy.

Alyssa Lawrence, who thinks she is god's gift to the male of the species, shoots Kyla a look filled with faux pity. She stands up and struts towards my father, swaying her hips like Rosalie does when she tries to get Emmett's attention. Dad's expression makes me laugh – he looks like he's staring at the hairy ass undergoing a colonoscopy.

Too self-involved to notice, Alyssa goes for a sultry, "Hey, Edward." She sounds like she's drunk.

"Good afternoon," my Dad replies tersely.

Given the expression on Alyssa's face, she heard something along the lines of "Alyssa, my love. Tell me about your day. It must've been absolutely _enthralling._"

Alyssa inches closer. As if in response, my Dad takes a step back. Ever persistent, Alyssa reaches out to put a hand on his chest.

"Good afternoon indeed," she whispers, batting her eyelashes.

The contents of my lunch threaten to spill out into the leather seats of the Audi. This is disgusting. It's like watching hyenas mating on the Discovery Channel.

I roll down the window, and stick out my head. I probably look like a Golden Retriever. It's a far less wretched side than watching a blonde 17-year-old put her hand on my father's century-old chest, and having my father look at it as though it were covered in urine.

"Edward," I say loudly, wrinkling my nose. It's so _bizarre _to call him that. "Edward, it's almost 4:00."

"We really are in a rush," Dad says curtly. "Good day, Allison."

I bark out a laugh. Alyssa turns to glare at me, and then quickly composes her face. It's not a good move to glare at the "little, weak, paralyzed" sister of the object of your perverted sexual fantasies, by your own admission. In the meantime, Daddy climbs into the car and drives out of the parking lot. In the meantime, I play a little with his radio. _The Funeral March _is playing on the channel for classical music. Typically, I wouldn't mind listening to this – but its Friday, after school. He can't be serious.

"We're not listening to robots beeping and rappers cussing," he says, but his tone is light. He's smiling even though he's looking vaguely traumatized about Alyssa's desperate flirting.

"Well, as much as your little girlfriend's stint made me want to kill myself, we're not listening to this," I retort back. "It's depressing." After a bit of fumbling, I settle on a retro station playing _1979 _by the Smashing Pumpkins. We ride in compatible silence, until the radio host informs us of the name of the song and proceeds to play _The Sultans of Swing _by the Dire Straits.

"It's funny that the Smashing Pumpkins is now considered Retro," Dad says. "This only came out in '96."

"It came out nearly 30 years ago," I say, "nearly a third of a human lifetime."

"Once you've lived a century, it feels like the blink of an eye," he says thoughtfully. His voice darkens nearly imperceptibly, and he turns to gaze out the window, at the massive oaks passing us by. I think about the implication of what he's saying – when I've lived a century…

I look at the prospect of living for a century with a body unresponsive from the chest down with trepidation, to say the least.

I can't imagine it. I don't know what it feels like to _walk _– I've never felt the sensation of it, in spite of the fact that I've experienced the mechanics of it in a Swiss rehab center. Hell, I don't even feel a sense of loss. I lost my legs before I even had a chance to use them. I feel _frustrated, _yes – I can't even take a shit without artificial intervention, and sometimes it _hurts. _You think it wouldn't hurt, being paralyzed, but it's the cruelest irony of all. Sometimes, it hurts so _much _it's hard to think. It's called neuropathic pain, a burning sensation below the line of injury. "Burn", though, feels like putting it mildly.

"But it'll stop one day, sweetheart," Daddy vows. "I promise."

His voice is gentle, even if his face is contorting with pain, but there's an undercurrent of fire to it. Gingerly, he takes my hand and kisses the back of it. If the intensity of his vow isn't enough, the fire in his voice and the pulsating rage, his actions are proof enough that it isn't an empty promise. He's done everything in his power to make his vow come to fruition. My family donates _millions _of dollars a year to stem cell research, and then some. Thousands of millions of Cullen money have gone into anything related to the treatment of injuries to the spinal cord Banner lectured us about. Carlisle is doubling as a researcher and physician at the Mayo clinic, and Daddy has every intention of going into neuroscience as soon as he graduates from St. Marge's.

His face is crumbling between a mix of resolute desperation and overwhelming pain, his features twisting in agony. I reach out to squeeze Daddy's hand, letting him know – through feelings, if not thoughts – that I don't mind. It's the truth – most of the time, I don't. I lead a very happy, blessed life. All of my family is kind of oblivious to that fact. In this family, everybody manages to blame _everything _on their person. Everybody feels _personally _responsible for the second biggest tragedy of my existence. Hell, I've heard my grandmother blame herself for what happened because of the _positioning of the freaking staircase. _

It's a miracle I grew into such an upbeat person.

"I wouldn't say upbeat, love," Daddy teases me. "Snarky, sassy seems like a better choice of vocabulary."

"You've called me your little ray of sunshine," I point out. _Because I lit up his world, _he'd say.

My family does have a collective guilt complex. He likes to say that he didn't deserve either me or my late mother, and that he failed us. How he failed us is beyond me, especially where the chair and the injury is concerned. Rosalie wishes that she hadn't lifted me up into the air to coo at me, that she'd been stronger, her grip on me a little tighter. She forgets I was wrenched out of her grip; there are two sets of teeth to the side of my ribcage to prove it. Emmett blames himself for not being there to protect us and Jasper for the exact same reason. It's as if they all feel their actions landed me in the chair.

It's none of their faults, though.

The _person _to blame, I think delicately, is a werewolf by the name of Jacob Black.


	2. The Guttural Sound of Fear

Nessie's Friday doesn't go as planned, but it's not for the reasons she expected.

* * *

**The Guttural Sound of Fear **

Once the name has left the depth of my subconscious, my entire body responds. My palms begin to sweat, and beads of sweat build in the _delicate _crook of my neck, along my collarbones. Breathing hitched, I find it difficult to exhale. The contents of my stomach churn, threatening to spill out of my parched mouth. Under my skin, my blood boils, flushing the entirety of my body, even though I can't _feel _a lot of it. It's my body's natural reaction to my biggest fucking fear, one as entrenched in my psyche as the knowledge of my own name. _Fuck_, I think.

Daddy doesn't say anything, but I know he's not taking it any better. He's only sworn three times in my presence. All three of the curses were in some way describing Black. (In all fairness, he wasn't cursing _in front of me. _I happened to be within earshot.) In typical Edward Cullen style, he blames my regular use of the words "fuck", "son of a bitch" and "bastard" to his slips in control. Daddy ignores that I was raised by Emmett, a man so foulmouthed that he makes the Queen sound like a horny sailor. Unlike his brother, Daddy is too circumspect to offend my delicate female ears. Either that or the Victorian Era really was that incredibly uptight – like the Middle Ages making a comeback before giving way to the debauchery of the 1920s.

Daddy rolls his eyes. "I'd hardly call us _medieval, _Renesmee," he says.

I snicker. The best way to get his panties in a twist is to criticize the era of his birth. The corners of my lips turn up, and I tilt my head sideways to hide my grin. Around us, the forest is thickening. We're less than a mile from the house now.

"…Some of the biggest breakthroughs in science were made in the Victorian Era, ranging from the discovery of the Plum Pudding atomic model, and the first steps to the discovery of Penicilin…"

Good god in heaven, my father _really _is 120 years old. Whenever he starts talking about the things he's lived through he starts to sound like Mr. McCreedy, a grouchy old man that is always shopping for Campbell cans of soup at Trader Joe's. For some reason, Nana and I _always _bump into the poor old man, and hence, listening to a story about 'Nam in the 70s. Like a bird of prey, he waits outside Trader Joe's for people like Nana, who are too polite to tell him they have something better to do than listening to his heroics against the "goddamned Reds" and his tirade against Vladimir "fuckin'" Putin.

"Regardless," Daddy says, interrupting my train of thought. "I'd say we were more civilized back then. There's nothing progressive about encouraging young girls to walk around half-naked, or to encourage pre-marital relations of a sexual nature…"

_Pre-marital relations of a sexual nature. _I laugh.

"Isn't that ideal moot nowadays? I mean, marriage is a social contract to protect the spouses' children, but if a couple can't get pregnant before marriage, then there's no reason for them not to roll in the hay."

If my father had blood_, _his face would be turning a hideous shade of _magenta_. He's gripping the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles whitened. The lips on Dad's face are opening and closing like a goldfish's. From the look on his face, you'd think the man had just witnesses a slaughter of some kind. What's probably making his reaction worse is that, by the flair of my thoughts, he can tell I'm not kidding. Because I know he _can't _actually stop breathing or go into shock, I laugh loudly at him.

I really _am _a little ray of sunshine.

We're driving through the cul-de-sac driveway. Inside the house, I can hear Alice's tinkling giggles, Rosalie's snorts of derision, Jasper's throaty chuckles and Emmett's booming laugh. The latter two probably think my comment was an attempt to take the piss out of my father. Emmett even does say (eyes probably twinkling with pride), "Atta girl, traumatize Daddy." If they knew I'd just voiced my legitimate opinion, they wouldn't be laughing.

"Daddy," I say gently, as the garage door opens. "Daddy, I was kidding."

It's a flat lie.

"It wasn't funny," he snarls. In some situations, though, it's best for his mental sanity when we leave certain things unacknowledged.

The existence of my breasts is one of those things.

With his shock giving way to anger, Daddy climbs out of the car. I barely have time to process this; he's reassembled the chair already, and is standing outside. The corners of my lips are turned down, through no fault of my own. Knowing it'll make his anger vanish, I peek up at Daddy through my eyelashes with my "big, doe-like eyes." Even though I call bull on all that mojo about my eyes being "deep and innocent", I peek up through my eyelashes several times a day. It works like a charm.

Besides the chair, Daddy relaxes. "Smart girl," he mumbles.

He gives me the evil eye, but he's no longer as rigid as a goddamned totem pole.

The Audi is small and low enough for me to swivel into the chair by myself. I recline the seat and pull it back a little to give me space. Using my arms, I lift my body out of the seat and angle it towards the chair. Even though I've done it hundreds of thousands of times, Daddy always looks a little nervous. By his wince, you'd think I'd plummet to my death even though my ass is only a foot above the concrete. Then I swing my legs from the seat into the footrests, lowering the two with my hands. I'd be mad at Daddy for panicking, but he panics just as much when I use sharp cutlery. It's just who he is.

Unlike other parking lots, the family makes sure to leave enough space between each car so that it's relatively easy for me to maneuver my chair through the garage. Daddy knows better than to try and push me through it. Being conniving as I am, though, I _am _making him carry my backpack because I don't feel like taking it up to my room.

Like I said, I'm an awful person.

"You're not," Dad says. I don't have to look up to see he's grinning.

There's an elevator built into the house, parallel to the staircase. Nana's cute like that and decided to make the back of it glass, which means I get a spectacular view of Lake Erie and the surrounding forest at least five times a day. I spin around to back up into it, and then blow Daddy a kiss before the elevator doors shut. True to form, he waits for me to be safely in before heading upstairs.

I press the 1st floor button. Typically, I'd go into the kitchen to be fed by my Nana, but she's out of town – she works around the clock for three different charities in the upstate area. Today, I head for the living room.

"You're stayin' home tonight," Emmett _booms _like a motherfucking trumpet. The elevator doors aren't even open, for crying out loud.

"It'll be fun!" I protest in reply, so vehemently _I _even believe my own lie. Suddenly, the prospect of going to this bonfire – hell, maybe even the freezing metallic bleachers – seems deliciously appealing.

"You're just like your mother," my Dad mumbles under his breath with fond irritation, as he comes down the stairs. The range of emotion he manages to inflict into the sentence is incredible. Every time he says it, however briefly, he sounds equal parts amazed, loving, and pained. It warms me a little bit from the inside every day.

I roll out of the elevator to pout at Emmett. As is his way when he isn't thinning out forests – or replanting what he's left undone – or getting rid of invasive species of predator, he's watching ESPN.

I park the chair parallel to the couch and swivel out of it. Careful not to fall, I grab each leg and take off my Mary Janes. It takes a while, bending over, because my abdominal muscles are completely paralyzed. As I raise each leg, I meet some resistance with my abductor – it is harder to fold the leg – in the left one Then, I scoot to the opposite end of the couch using my arms because my hips won't move me My toes are touching Emmett's thigh. Very gently, he grabs both feet and puts them on his lap. Gingerly, he begins to rub them. My feet probably appreciate the gesture, even though they don't do much other than dangle.

Comfortable, I continue my protests.

"I really want to go," I say, pouting. Immediately, I realize I haven't approached this intelligently. I should've called him Uncle Em and raised the pitch of my voice. I hate sounding pitiful, but even then. I'm not opposed to using my voice as the means to an end.

"_Hell_ to the no," Emmett retorts, still sounding like a goddamned trombone. "Why do you want to hang around a bunch of horny little shit-heads?"

"Because," I repeat, raising the pitch of my voice. "It'll be fun."

Emmett grunts. My uncle isn't a man of many words.

Undaunted, I switch tactics. Before he has a chance to turn to the TV, I peek at him from my underneath my lashes, batting them slowly. I relax my face to make sure my eyes widen a little, playing up to my face's "delicacy."

"But Uncle Emmett," I say softly. "I _want _to go."

It's all such bullshit, yet Emmett falls for it like Scarlett O'Hara into Rhett Butler's arms. I have to fight to keep the smugness from ruining my Bambi look.

"Your Daddy agrees with me, pumpkin," he says apologetically, lowering his tone of voice to a gentle, soothing pitch. "It isn't a good idea for you to go."

Now that Emmett's putty in my hands he won't call me out on acting like a brat. Nobody ever calls me out on acting like a brat. I huff irritably, although my irritation doesn't stem from his reply. I'm apparently losing my touch.

"Why?" I demand loudly and obnoxiously.

Before Emmett can say anything, I rattle on.

"It's _just _a bonfire," I whine, placing obnoxious emphasis on the adverb.

"There'll be alcohol," Jasper says, popping out of goddamned nowhere.

I snort derisively. "If 3 grams of Dilaudid can barely knock me out, I doubt a cup of cheap beer is going to do the trick."

Dilaudid is the strongest prescription pain killer in the continental United States. Carlisle tried to use it when the off-counter drug to treat neuropathic pain – Neurotonin - didn't work efficiently enough. Desperation is a harsh mistress, and my grandfather would've sold his soul at that point. I'd tried to down-play the pain, but a touch of my palms could tell them how unbearable it felt. The problem isn't the spinal cord injury as much as it is that Mr. Black did a very thorough job. He dislodged one of my hips, and made my back look like the work of a toddler on a scratch-a-doodle. The injuries can be treated locally, and my grandfather does a beautiful job of it – but pain sometimes flares. Even though I can't _feel _what those injuries are supposed to make me feel, my nervous system does respond. At best, it's with neuropathic pain. At worse, it can lead to Autonomic Dysreflexia.

I really do _hate _Jacob Black, with every fiber of my being.

My family usually doesn't react well to jokes about anything injury-related. Both Jasper and Emmett wince uncomfortably, like I would if I caught Nana and Granddady going at it. (_This, of course, does not happen – ever._) Even Emmett gets a little mopey. Very gently, he lifts up my foot and kisses the arch of it. Before they both go on a self-cutting spree, I continue my protests.

"That's a dumb argument," I tell Jasper.

"The problem isn't _you _getting drunk, darlin'," Jasper replies. "The problem is the idiot boys at school."

""So?" I ask my blonde Uncle rudely, like he's as stupid as Homer Simpson on weed.

Colonel Whitlock and Emmett gape at me incredulously. My uncles are _such_ pussies. Evidently, they're both opposed to my outing – as they have been opposed to the past fifteen. Emmett is too putty in my hands to fight me on it but he won't let me go, and Jasper is about to try some emotional mojo to convince me. I can tell. Nobody in this house has the balls to say "No" to me. I glower at Jasper furiously, and he cowers back as though I pose any threat to his safety. I wish I could kick Emmett in the face to slap this look of incredulity off it. Dumb and Dumber, as I call them when they're acting thusly, then stare at me, as though they expect some light bulb in my head to go off.

Do they think they're going to _hurt _me? My pretty, full pink lips fall open.

"I'm not _fragile,_" I snarl, in a low, throaty voice. I sound like my Dad when he's _furious_. "I can still _defend _myself."

"We know, baby," Jasper pleads. "It's just…_unpleasant_…to be in that environment, with those little shit-heads getting' all touchy-feely, and we don't want you to be uncomfortable."

Foot massage be damned, I lean on my arms to sit up and then scoot back to the couch. Unfortunately, it takes so much time that I look more pitiful than mad, but fuck that.

"It's uncomfortable for _you all,_" I fume. It's uncomfortable for me, too, but they don't need to know that. I really want to prove a point now. Dad's sitting by the piano, listening in to the conversation and staying out of it. Now, he laughs. It's a cold, mocking cackle.

"Besides," I add, ignoring Dad's evil laugh. "I'm an adult. I can make my own decisions."

A chorus of five different variations of "You're not 18 yet!" follows my statement. Emmett's "Fuck, no, you're still a fucking baby," is the most elegant one.

I let out a long, high-pitched whine of irritation. It'd take me a fuckload of time to transfer into the chair and throw a proper tantrum, with door-slamming and yelling galore. I settle for whining pitifully.

"If we're going by human or chronological definitions of age you should join your cohorts at the nursing home!" I say, cackling like a maniac. Then I add, "I've been fully grown for the past nine years, and god knows, I matured a lot faster than that!"

"You're acting like a teenager!" Daddy roars. He's stood up from his desk, and is pacing back and forth, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

I turn around to look directly into his eyes. Unlike my earlier stint with the batting eyelashes, I'm not trying to manipulate my father. _I _am _a teenager. I want to _do _what normal teenagers do, including but not limited to, going out on a Friday night. Yes, there'll be alcohol, and yes, there will be drunken boys but that's part of the normal teenage experience. I deserve, at least, a normal teenage experience._ Lingering in my subconscious, but never voiced or thought, is the fact that I've never been or had fully normal teenage experiences.

Daddy continues his pacing, looking like the goddamned Flash. Irritable, I open my mouth to protest but –

He cuts me off.

"You'll keep your cellphone on you the entire time, on loud," he finally says. "One of us has to be at least within a 1 mile range – "

"That's not fair!" I yell, in a voice high-pitched and whiny. "No one's parents are going to be that close!" Unless you count Mr. and Mrs. Lafferty, but there's no need to lose an argument on a technicality.

Daddy looks at me intensely, his golden eyes looking as stony as the element of their color. The entirety of his face has turned into _ice. _Very subtly, he tilts his head in the direction of the chair. I feel a pang of hurt at the implication of Daddy's gaze. I override it with anger and indignation before the tears can spill out of my big, doe-like eyes.

"I can't get AD from standing near a bonfire!" I yell indignantly. Daddy and I both know that's not what he was implying.

"Edward, that's enough," Aunt Rose finally says, popping out of nowhere – as is a familial habit, apparently. She knows I'm about to cry and is comfortingly rubbing circles on my shoulders, sitting on the headrest. Daddy turns up to give Rose a furious glare. I think its proof of their love for one another that they haven't ripped each other to shreds in 80 years.

"It is," Daddy says through gritted teeth, agreeing to my stray thought. My thought didn't need to be commented on; Daddy's doing it to piss her off. Rose doesn't take the bait.

"Nessie understands the conditions, don't you, darling?" Rose says in a soothing voice, more for his benefit than mine. "She'll have her phone with her at all times, we'll be nearby at a reasonable distance, and she gets picked up at midnight."

"Midnight?!" I squeal, indignant. Rose tilts her head down to give me a Look that says I need to shut the fuck up if I want her support.

"Fine," I huff.

Daddy nods.

Thus endeth the argument.

* * *

A half hour later, I'm strapped inside Emmett's jeep. We're going _hunting_, as per my request. I feel thirsty, and there is some truth to Jasper's ludicrous fear that my classmates will get touchy-feely if they're high or drunk. As things go, my self-control is the envy of a choco-holic on a diet. However, self-control is best when I'm satiated. I'd rather not tempt fate, as I'm going to be sorely tempted by Alejandro Martinez' neck three inches from my nose. At that distance, the overwhelming scent of his blood makes it easy to ignore the fact that his cologne smells like he bought it from a date rapist outside a gas station.

I stopped drinking human pouches of blood so regularly, because I feel it's like taking resources away from patients at the hospital that need them _urgently. _Daddy says I'm being ridiculous about the matter. "It's like refusing to eat because there are starving children in the Congo," my father had said. I doubt his reasoning. For being so intelligent, my father makes Sarah Palin look like Einstein re-incarnate.

Hence, I accompany my family when they go hunting nearby – which is why I find myself strapped to Emmett's Jeep. It can only make it so far into the forest, though - about 60 miles past rocky, rugged terrain, it's best to stop driving. At this point, the Jeep is about as useful as my wheelchair in the rocky terrain.

"Let's go, short stuff," Emmett says. "We're running on schedule."

Rosalie wants me to do my exercises before I leave for the bonfire. Not a day goes by that she doesn't work my legs, but in spite of her loving care, my legs still look like meatless chicken wings. The fact of the matter is my legs have never supported my body weight, and the muscles have never naturally contracted. Black snapped my spine like a little twig before I'd been on this earth for five minutes. Rosalie says it's vitally important, and that I'll thank her someday, but this is also a woman that finds Emmett Cullen _charming. _What does she know about _anything_?

Sighing, I open the car door. Jasper's outside, waiting. There's no point in taking the wheelchair deeper into the forest, even though it's packed up in the Jeep's trunk. Both of them can carry the titanium wheelchair – and my body in it - like it's made of foam, even with me packed up in it, but it would slow them down. It's not packed up in the car so I can move around in the forest. It's meant to allow me to move in and out of the Jeep. I refuse to lose my hard-gained independence before I _absolutely _have to, so I pushed my chair all the way to the passenger seat. Emmett's Jeep is as inaccessible to a paraplegic as a rock climbing wall is, so my independence ended in the garage.

"May I, honey?" Jasper asks. Nodding, I wrap my arms around Jasper's neck while he hooks his arms through my bony, jean-clad knees. Jazz is sweet like that. He always asks for permission to manhandle me before he does. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Emmett's inner little girl treats me like the rag doll Emmettina never had. However, Emmett has no sense of personal space, so I don't hold a grudge against him.

Jasper carries me bridal style. Without support, my torso crumbles like paper, so I can't piggyback ride on either of them. Together, Dumb, Dumber and I weave our way to the forest. The sun is coming down, lighting up the cloudless, bright blue sky. Light filters through the barren trees and falls upon my Uncles' skin. They sparkle like Bedazzled jackets. It's late February, and frost is still clinging to the ground. It's made it particularly enjoyable to maneuver a wheelchair – because, as is common knowledge, nothing in the world is more enjoyable.

The cold of the air still bites, and I can see my breath as it leaves my pink lips. Rose wrapped me up like a burrito, terrified I'd get cold. I'm wearing a pair of knee-length chocolate suede boots, and a matching jacket. I look like the Michelin man. There's a knit hat covering my head, even though it'll be a miracle if it stays in my head. The wind is blowing so hard Emmett's shirt is clinging to him like it's wet.

To make the cold worse, Jasper is barreling through the forest as though our lives depend on his speed. Ever ballerina-like, Emmett and Jasper's feet crunch the dead, yellow leaves under their feet.

"You'll scare away whatever isn't hibernating," I hiss at them.

"Nessie, Nessie, Nessie," Emmett says with cocky glee. "Leave this to the pros."

Jazz and I snort. Emmett was mauled by a bear nearly a century ago. He is still incapable of meeting a grizzly without an unbearable desire to crush it like to a pulp. At the sight of big game, Emmett gets as excited as a 40-year-old virgin at a whorehouse. The bigger the game is, the greater Emmett's desire to hunt is. That is why my brilliant uncle is donating money to some mad scientists trying to reincarnate wooly mammoths. He wants them to roam the earth so he can _get them off it. _I doubt "bat-shit crazy" is a desirable trait in a professional hunter. I say this last part to Jasper by putting my hand on his cheek.

Jasper laughs.

"You're a treasure," Jasper whispers in my ear, with an adoring grin. Since I have no humility whatsoever, I smile like I agree. People wonder why I have an ego the size of Alaska.

Oblivious to our conversation, Emmett continues trying to prove himself.

"When have I ever failed you, kitten?" he asks, wagging his eyebrows, none the wiser to our exchange.

"You broke one of my Barbies when I was little," I say. "_And _you stepped on my Barbie Dreamhouse. _And _you stuck your big sausage of a finger in the frosting of my birthday cake even though you weren't actually going to eat it…"

"It looked like plastic!" he squawks, so loudly a school of nearby birds flutters out of a nearby canopy like bats out of hell. "I wasn't going to feed my baby girl _plastic_!"

"It's called fondant, genius," I say, rolling my pretty little eyes. "It's _meant _to look less mushy than frosting."

"Whatever. I've never failed you at _hunting,_" he corrects.

I rack my brains for an incident. I'm sure there's _something, _somewhere…but Emmett has always been surprisingly gentle and careful where I'm concerned. Since these are two qualities Emmett seems incapable of replicating elsewhere in his life, I'm actually quite touched.

"While you two little kids argue," Jasper says, "I'm going to go and hunt."

We're nearing the foot of the mountain range, where there's bound to be some game. Jasper tightens his grip on my body, as though he's terrified I'm going to fall. The air around us is thunderous – trees creak -, and for once, I'm glad I can't feel the bite of the air on my round little tush. Unlike I usually do, I squeeze my eyes shut – the air stings my eyes – and I cuddle closer to Jasper's chest.

Eventually, my nose is filled with the stench of a nearby game of elk, even if it is distant. Dumb and Dumber have smelled it, too. The elk are wandering around at the very edge of the mountain, several feet up in the air – and I have a hard time breathing at that altitude.

I'm a T1 paraplegic, meaning that Mr. Black mauled my nerves high enough to paralyze me from the chest down, but stopped before mauling my arms. It means that, in addition to being unable to piss, shit or feel touch, my _endurance _for breathing – if not the capacity itself – is compromised at high altitude, because my intercostal muscles don't always work.

"Nessie, love, we're going to leave you down here," Jasper says gently, even though I know already.

What usually happens is that they chase the game down to wherever I am, and then carry me close to a buck they've taken down – usually by snapping its spine. It's the most horrible kind of irony. I even go as far as to pat the animal with comforting thoughts, which is quite a difficult task. The only way I ever can approach a large animal is if I _know _it can't hurt me. Black did such a number on me that I'm scared shitless at anything bigger than Chihuahua. Hell, I start _whimpering _like a baby at the sight of a Great Dane.

"Do you want me to stay with you, kiddo?" Emmett asks, looking into my face. Neither of them looks like he has _fed _in the near past_. _Both of their eyes are as black as coal, to the point where it's difficult to see their pupils. I touch the circles under Emmett's eyes, and figure this is why they took me hunting. _They _also need to hunt.

"You guys should hunt before scaring the game down here," I say, attempting to sound nonchalant. They both start panicking as though I've suggested dropping out of high school to become a monster-truck driver. However, I want _them _to feel better. There are things about vampirism that I understand better, I think, than my Mom ever did. Neuropathic pain is as chronic as their burning thirst – it never entirely goes away – and as I is the case with me, there are things they just can't _do. _

"Nessie, honey – I don't think that's a good – "

"Come on," I say, the picture of nonchalance. "It's not like Big Foot is going to show up."

I give them a crooked grin to re-assure them of my fearlessness.

They look unconvinced.

"Look," I try again, pointing towards a nice, sturdy, thick branch in one of the barren oaks. "You can just leave me there for a couple of minutes. I'll be fine."

Finally, they both tilt their heads down, nodding slowly in agreement. I'm happy for them.

I'm glad to offer them a little respite from their thirst.

"Seriously," I repeat with a smile. "I'll be fine."

"Alright," Emmett says carefully. Jasper follows as Emmett carries me up into a tree. It's high up enough that Emmett has to lift me á la Lion King blue-assed monkey. Jasper helps him by lifting up my useless legs. The oak's branch is thick enough for me to sit on and still have a couple of inches of leg room. They don't stay in position, and my toes fall in to touch each other like magnets. I test moving around a little. Once I'm sure I'm not going to plummet to my death, I speak.

"See?" I say, sounding like the ray of sunshine the poor fuckers think I am. "I'll be fine."

Jasper's lips are pursed. "If anything happens – "

"I'll scream like a banshee," I assure him.

Uncle Jazz grins.

Emmett nods his approval, and then proceeds to kiss my forehead as though he's a mother abandoning her newborn at an orphanage. Jasper does the same. I bite back the urge to fake-gag. There's no need to make fun of their overprotectiveness when they've taken it down a notch. I watch them disappear like bullets, weaving their path through the thinning trees of the rising mountain. They're laughing, shoving each other as they try to outrun each other. In barely a couple of seconds, I hear the thunderous stampede of the elk moving away from their bantering.

"Dumbasses," I mutter fondly.

Their momentary absence does give me a rare moment of solitude. I drum my fingers against a tree branch, emulating the movements I'd make to play Brahms' Lullaby_. _Privacy is something I rarely ever get, and I intend to enjoy my alone time. I feel a smile spread across my lips. I inhale slowly, letting it permeate my lungs before letting them flow back out. It's a little sigh of content, and I giggle, giddy. Above me, past the dead branches, the sky is streaked in the sun's orange-and-pink hues, similar to the color of my cheeks and eyelids.

_Any humbler, _I think to myself, _and you'll turn into Mother Theresa._

For the sake of something to do rather than for the sake of comfort, I pull my legs apart with my arms like I'm riding a horse. It'll stretch out the abductors, at the very least. One of each leg dangles from each side of the branch. Satisfied, I close my eyes, relishing the cold. I can't feel it, and my upper body is cocooned very nicely. The cold feels _pleasant. _The air blows against my face, turning the hollows of my cheeks pink. I'll look gorgeous tonight.

Even though Dumb & Dumber have probably scared the elk away to other side of the nation, the forest still reeks of dead matter – decomposing bugs and the leaves my uncles crushed. To have something nicer to smell, I grab a lock of my ponytail and press it like a mustache underneath my nose.

Ah. That's _much _better.

"Hmh," I sigh contendedly.

Around me, a twig cracks. My eyes widen. My heart fires up like its met tinder, pulsating wildly. If this is Emmett's idea of a joke, it's _not_ fucking funny_. _

"Emmett?" I ask snappishly, my voice trembling.

No reply comes.

To relax, I decide to try napping. I inhale and exhale the scent of my own thick hair. Slowly, I begin shutting my eyes. My eyelashes flutter against my cheeks. Before they've fully shut, through the holed thicket of my eyelashes, I see a flash of silvery white fur.

My heart accelerates like a firecracker bursting. I can no longer hear it's thumping, but I can _feel _it like Morse code against my breast. Beads of sweat build behind my woolen scarf, sending my body boiling. I drop my other arm for balance, and as my ponytail drops to my side, a stench floods my nostrils. It's the stench of something's god-awful breath. It's the stench of matted, soiled fur – it smells animal hide in a hunter's cabin. Finally, I turn my head to the side. My eyes snap open like a rubber band snapping. Time freezes.

Like a little old lady, I squint at the space where the flash of white vanished. _Don't panic, _I tell myself. I wonder if it's a good time to scream. Twigs continue snapping. I continue leering at the barren trees before me. The hairs in my arms rise as I hear the leaves being stirred by claws. Something joins the hideous cacophony of crunching and snapping twigs.

It's the sound of my jagged breathing, coming in bursts out of my mouth and nose.

I consider my options. There aren't many. I can't see the mass of white-and-gray fur. It _can't be _Jacob Black. He doesn't know where I am. His fur is russet colored. It can't be Jacob Black. He can't hurt me anymore. My hands start to tremble, and I grab the tree branch. If my hands aren't in fighting order, then nothing in my body is.

_Don't panic. _Whatever it is, I'm protected from it here. The werewolves can't be taller than a fully erect Emmett. I crane my neck back, to check for the mass of fur. There's nothing there. I can't turn any further without losing my precarious balance.

_Don't panic, _I tell myself. _You're safe in the trees. There are few things out there taller than Emmett. _

The only threat up here in this branch is my own, non-existent balance. I probably can't bruise myself if I fall but – what then? Even at full speed, using all of my arms strength, the dead weight of my body holds me back. I can barely outrun a squirrel.

Besides me, something grunts.

I scream_. _It's the guttural sound of undiluted panic.

The speckled gold-and-green hues of my eyes meet two pure black ones. There is a glint of light in its eyes. Even dry-mouthed and trembling, I know this _thing _is _thinking, _and not like an _animal. _A pale pink scar runs across its cheek. I can smell its breath putrid breath. I can see its yellowing fangs, feel them ghosting against the peach of my cheeks. Two or three of them are missing. When our eyes meet, I know this is no _ordinary _animal.

"Jasper," I croak. "Emmett."

I repeat the names. Blood is pooling in my ears. The fluttering of my pulse is drowning out all other noises. I can only hope the sounds I've emitted louder.

I come to face with a bear whose head, twice the size of mine, is in dangerously close proximity. The bear's ears are flattened on top of its silvery head. It tilts head, inching it closer towards me. The bear's moistened snout touches my pert little nose. His moist snout drags along the bridge of my nose, living a slippery, sticky trail behind it.

The scream catches in my throat. My entire body is paralyzed in fear.

Pushing my fear back, I let out a massive, ear-shattering scream, so high-in pitch I sound like a whistle.

The animal besides me lets out a deep, throaty _growl. _Tears pool in my eyes. The hairs on my neck rise coming into contact with the bark of the tree.

A bite is coming – the bear's mouth is falling open, revealing toothless gums, and it's ham-sized fist is in the air….

With a trembling fist, I unfold my arm, slamming it against the bear's shoulder.

The force of my own hit makes me lose my balance. I can't even see if my blow had the desired effect. Like a slinky falling across a staircase, my body plummets to the ground.

I only feel my head hit the ground. My chin slams against my sternum. It's as though my organs are being jostled inside my torso. The sounds are muffled by the sound of the bear _galloping, _like a goddamned horse, into the distance.

"Jasper!" I screech. My voice is hoarse, marred by the sound of my fear. "Emmett!"

Weakly, I try to raise my torso with my arms. The world spinning on its axis. Leaning on one arm, breathing heavily, I manage to disentangle my dead legs. Because of my stupid leg-spreading stunt, my left leg landed first, inside of the foot twisted underneath my right knee. Tears are streaming down my cheeks. If the blow had any impact, I can barely feel it.

"Baby, what happened?" one of them demands frantically. It's Emmett. Their bodies can't tremble, but their voices are shaking like the leaves fluttering around us. I feel him drag my head into his lap. They're both kneeling besides me. Jasper is checking the side of my body for injuries.

"Nessie, what happened?"

Through my tears, I say like a raging, unstoppable moron: "Big foot came."

* * *

**Author's Note: **

If you've made it this far, thank you! Your reviews are read, replied to and very much appreciated.

A big, heartfelt thank you to Nise7465! She has kindly read over last chapter and this one. Thanks to her work, some important details about living with Nessie's disability (specifically speaking, the use of a catheter) have been included. You can find them if you scroll down.

Thanks, everyone!


	3. The Absent Sense of Self-Preservation

This chapter has a more explicit description of Nessie's chair. There's a picture of it on my profile.

* * *

**The Absent Sense of Self-Preservation**

"Big foot was here."

Uncle Jazz squints at me as though he's worried I suffered irreparable brain damage.

"Big foot?" Emmett repeats slowly.

For the second time that day, both of my uncles look at me as though I've finally gone crazy. It's not a completely far-fetched theory; I'm awfully upbeat for a motherless, paraplegic 16-year-old. I have the internal monologue of a crazy old bat. I toy with the affections of an 18-year-old boy I have no intention of dating, whatsoever. I just made a bear anthropomorphous , even considering him my intellectual equal for a good five minutes. I think of myself as a Little Mermaid look-alike physically regularly comparing my personality to that of her arch-nemesis, a fat octopus.

Unfortunately for all involved, I'm _not _clinically insane.

Emmett touches his beefy hand to my forehead, as if checking for a fever. Jasper continues to prod along my body. It's not going to respond to his touch, but perhaps something _is _swelling.

"There was a big ass bear," I say. In my head, I sound angry. In reality, I sound like a newborn kitten. Tears are still streaming down my cheeks, and I sniff. Even though I'm in the comfort of both their arms, I'm still trembling.

"Oh, pipsqueak," Emmett says in a gentle voice. He begins stroking my hair.

"Sweetheart, bears are nothing to be afraid of," Jasper corroborates softly, stopping his ministrations.

These are both men that are privy to the fact that I've harbored nightmares about wolves since I was old enough to dream. I know that while I dream of being hurt by Jacob Black, they fantasize about hurting him the way he hurt has spent countless nights calming me down in the dead of the night, making me feel engulfed by the safety of our family's love. Emmett took the more hard-core approach of taking me to Arizona to prove to me he could crush a coyote like a bag of chips. To this day, I'm still not sure that was for the benefit of his ego or of my mental safety.

Far in the distance is the _whooshing _sound of several vampires running. Alice must've seen something.

"It wasn't Winnie-the-fucking-Pooh," I try to snarl. It's difficult to sound angry, though, as I'm blinded by the acidity of my tears. There's a ripping sound coming from the edge of my throat as I gasp for breath. In spite of this, I lift my hand to touch Jasper's cheek, then that of Emmett. The incident repeats in my head – the _scrutiny _of his stare, his height, and even the shape of his snout weren't _normal. _

Jasper does a double take. Emmett tightens his grip on my body. Dumb and Dumber exchange looks. I will myself to stop sobbing, because the muffled cries are making it even harder for me to listen in to their conversation. Nobody ever tells me anything – so I have to dig up the information myself. I presume they are either wondering if I can be trusted – I am scared _shitless _of Great Danes - or if I should be told about the implications of what I just told them. Perhaps they're wondering how to avoid my Dad's wrath at the fact that a hair was harmed on his little girl's head.

"The most important thing right now is for you to head home and be checked up on," Jasper says with firm gentleness. Emmett nods. I roll my eyes.

"I don't feel any pain," I say. Immediately, of course, I realize that means nothing, so I amend it by adding, "No throbbing in the head – nada."

"Oh, baby girl," Emmett mumbles.

He continues flattening back my hair like I'm an unkempt Chihuahua. Fear gives way to anger, but I know it's unjustified. Neither of them believes I can gauge the state of my own body. It's not a reaction I blame them for. If there _is _some painful stimulus that I can't detect immediately – a broken bone, an abrasion - pain signals will flare up my spine. My body _will _react in the form of a bone-crushing headache and high blood pressure. It is one lovely side-effect of being wheelchair-bound, known as Autonomic Dysreflexia.

"What the _hell _happened?" Daddy demands – I can hear him from a distance, the loud, furious ring of his voice approaching. Rosalie's right on his heels, her eyes wide with shock and fear. Alice is right behind them. Her eyes are glazing over as she searches the future. Daddy squats down beside me, tilting my chin up as if looking for injuries. He looks sick with panic.

"Nothing," I mumble immediately in a hoarse voice. Tears are still steamrolling down my cheeks, and I'm still shaking in Emmett's arms. "There was a bear."

Like my Uncles', Daddy's mind flashes back to the hundreds of times I've woken up after screaming my throat raw, in fear of Jacob Black _mauling me. _ In his head, I probably look four physically, not sixteen. Rose moves to the side opposite his. She repeats Jasper's motions, looking for bruises. Firmly, Rose presses her fingers to my right side. Finding no injuries, Rose begins looking at my back. Her fingers ghost over my battered back in search of an injury. Finding none, Rose breathes a momentary sigh of relief.

"We should still check for internal bleeding," Daddy says, in response to a thought of Rose's.

"Holy mother of Jesus," I mumble under my breath, sniffling. It's funny that I take the lord's name in vain now, post Catholic school, more than ever. "I said I was _fine._"

"I'd rather have Carlisle make sure before we assume anything," Daddy says quietly. Very gently, careful not to jostle me – although I doubt I hurt myself – he lifts me into his arms, supporting the crook of my neck. Beside him, Rose takes my hand. Daddy and Aunt Rose are walking at a snail pace because they don't want to jar me. I find it a bit ridiculous – my spine can't get any more fucked than it already is. I crane my neck up to look at Alice. Gently but firmly, Daddy pushes me back down.

"What happened?" I demand of Alice. Out of everyone, Alice is the most likely to recognize that I'm no longer a baby, mentally or physically. She stops future-searching. Her eyes are the color of ocher as they focus on my face.

"I saw you fall," she says simply. Of course, Alice didn't see _me _fall, or plummet to the ground. Rather, she saw the family fussing over me after I did. I'm a blind spot in Alice's sight, one that she's become increasingly adept at seeing past. For a split second, Alice looks like she wants to elaborate. Instead, she stops talking.

"Did you see the bear?" I demand intensely, craning my neck up. Daddy pushes it back down. We're close to the car. Rose rushes ahead to open the door. Together, she and Daddy pretend to be paramedics as they slip me into the back of the Jeep. Rose is stroking my hair, wordlessly caressing my face with her other hand to ensure it hasn't been hurt. Otherwise, she looks weak with relief.

"You're going to be fine," she coos, more for her sake than mine.

"I did_ not_ hurt myself," I tell her, enunciating each word carefully. My head isn't even throbbing.

Outside, the wind is picking up speed, whipping the glass panes of Emmett's Jeep. Neither he nor Jasper is moving, showing no intention of getting into the car. Daddy uses the frigid air as a pretense to shut the car door. The lips of the adults are moving nearly imperceptibly as they converse in low whispers.

Fear flares up inside me like flames in the presence of gas.

"They're not going to _look_ for that thing, are they?" I demand of Rose, my voice quivering. Using my arms, I sit up. She sighs, pulling me into her lap like I'm a little girl. I wish I could kick the glass window to get their attention. All of their eyes skirted to me briefly before returning to the hushed conversation.

"Don't worry about it, Nessie," she pleads. "What's important is getting you home."

"Aunt Rose," I beg, tears slipping freshly out of my eyes. "Rose, please, I don't want them to get hurt."

"They're not going to fight the bear, sweetheart," Rose says. I stare at her incredulously. _Does she not know her own husband_? I voice this concern out loud. In spite of the tense situation, a couple of grins light up my family's features, including Emmett's. The aforementioned oaf taps on the glass, and shakes his head with cocky glee. If he were a little less self-assured, though, I'd be less frightened. "I promise we won't fight anything, Nessie boo," he says.

I glower at him, pouring my lack of trust into the curve of my lips.

"They're just going to try to determine where it came from. Your Daddy -" I know she's worried about my well-being because she referred to my father in that capacity "- and I are taking you to the hospital so Granddaddy can take care of you."

"So it's a real threat?" I ask, having my worst fears confirmed. Suddenly, I feel like I had an inordinately heavy lunch. I'm assaulted by a horrible desire to vomit. My fingers wrap around Rosalie's shirt, clinging to it. I tilt my head towards the car, where Emmett, Jasper and Alice look ready to take off. Silently, I plead with my eyes for them not to go. _Don't go, _I beg, tears streaming down my cheeks. Daddy turns to look at me sympathetically.

"No, it's not a threat, my darling," Aunt Rose replies with a coo, stroking my hair. "We're just making sure that it isn't dangerous."

"Don't worry about them, sweetheart," Daddy says. Within seconds, he's in the passenger seat, ready to take off. "Right now, we need to get you an MRI scan, is all."

You know, however, that shit is going to hit the fan if and when Rosalie Hale and Edward Cullen agree with each other. That, and Rosalie Hale calling Edward Cullen "Daddy." That's fucked up shit, that is.

* * *

About 20 minutes later, Daddy, Rose and I are pulling up in the handicapped parking spot at the County Hospital, where Granddaddy has risen through the ranks at unheard of speed. In spite of the fact that he's the Head of Neurology, he's waiting for us outside, his handsome face fraught with concern. Rose helps me (code for "lifts me") into the chair. With one of her hands, she's shielding me from the wind as though it poses any big threat to my health or safety. I slap her hand away.

"I can push myself, you know," I tell her testily, sniffling my own snot. With a sigh, she drops the handles. Before I can move, though, Carlisle squats in front of me, cupping my cheek in his hands.

"Your son thinks I need an MRI scan," I inform him moodily. "And I don't."

"What happened?" Carlisle asks, alternating between looking at the three of us.

"Nothing," I say immediately in deadpan.

At the same time, Daddy and Rose say –

"She fell seven feet from a tree."

"She was mauled by a bear."

"Pft," I say, shaking my wrist nonchalantly.

Joining the club, Granddaddy looks at me like I've finally lost my already questionable sanity. In a hushed tone, he asks for the story from the adults, because of course, _I _wasn't its protagonist. The oh-so-dramatic phrases, "hit her head", "concussion" "mauled by a bear" and "plummeted to the ground" are used to narrate a tale I would've told less colorfully.

"I wasn't _mauled by a bear,_" I point out. "Do I look like I've been mauled?"

My grandfather purses his lips as though he's seriously considering his answer. My mouth falls open comically, and I let out a series of indignant "Ah" "Ey" "Oy"s. I tilt my head up towards the side mirror, to ensure I look unharmed. I don't. My face is bright red. The tears have left tracks around my cheeks and warmed them. Residual tears cling to my eyelashes like morning dew to grass. My dark, mahogany hair looks like a bird's nest on top of my head. Inside the red-rimmed whites of my eyes, my eyes look even more intensely green. Carlisle squats down beside me, brushing his lips against my forehead. They linger there a little too long – it's his sneaky way of checking for a fever.

Contrary to popular belief, I'm _not _going to keel over and die. Annoyed, I nudge Carlisle with the edge of one of the chair's footrests. Instinctively, Carlisle steps aside to give me space to roll up the wheelchair ramp. The chair squeaks as the rubber of the wheels meets water. This week's sunny weather has given heed to a slight sprinkle of rain. Luckily, it hasn't frozen over – or I wouldn't be able to move around myself. I can enjoy pushing myself in the accessible paradise that is the hospital, with nicely slanted ramps and wide turns. The only design flaw is the distance from the handicapped parking spots to the ER. I don't mind, though. I love hospitals, as they're the only truly accessible architectural feats under the sun. By contrast, the front door at St. Marge's is virtually impossible to open. It's so easy to move around in the hospital I feel smug bursts of self-satisfaction at every turn. Daddy, Carlisle and Rose follow.

"Go into Exam Room 3, love," Carlisle says. My grandfather turns to look at a nurse to explain he'll be examining me personally. The nurse's heartbeat picks up to the pace of mine, and her reply to his words is sultry. Ew. _That _will cause irreparable brain damage.

While conversing with _his _fan-girl, Carlisle urges me forward, past two or three people sitting down as they wait for their turns in the ER. None of it looks _urgent. _There are two children sitting down with bad cases of the flu, clinging to their mother. I give the little boy a friendly smile, waving at him as I roll past.

"Mommy, why is she in that thing?"

His mother tumbles through whispers trying to explain that I can't walk for some reason. As explanations to little kids go, it's not half-bad. I've heard some irritating shit over the years. I pay it no mind.

I enter Exam Room 3. Rose and Daddy are right behind me. Wordlessly, Daddy presses a button on the table and it lowers down. I swing out of the chair onto the table. Rosalie, distraught, looks like she wants to help me, but doesn't. I start to drum my fingers against the crinkly paper. Rosalie starts fidgeting with a diamond-studded band on her ring finger, a present from Emmett. By contrast, Daddy isn't moving, still as a statue.

Every time I so much as sneeze, Rose panics and Daddy begins to wallow in self-guilt and a sense of failure. I can tell by the expression on their faces something similar is happening. Daddy's planning my funeral and his ensuing century of self-imposed misery, and Rose is imagining my brain swelling inside my skull and pouring out of my eyeballs.

Jesus.

"This is silly," I say out loud. I begin clucking my tongue. Rose is too worried to look like she wants to strangle me, as she usually does when I do that. Together with the sound of my fingers tapping the crinkly paper, my tongue-clucking must be annoying the undead hell out of them.

The statue that is Daddy comes back to life. His eyes suddenly pulsate with life, and he turns towards me, putting my head against his thigh. Wordlessly, he unties the ribbon in the back of my hair and begins to comb his fingers through it. Twigs and leaves are fished out of it and land in a trash-can to the side. Over the years, Daddy has become surprisingly adept at styling my hair. By the time Carlisle comes back, my hair looks like it did this morning.

"Darling, can you show me how you fell down?" is the first thing he asks. Daddy leaves my side to stand in the corner, hands in his pockets. If not for the way his eyes are fraught with paternal concern, he looks ridiculously 17, hair mussed and hands in baggy jeans.

Grudgingly, I put my hand to Carlisle's cheek, omitting my attempt to punch an 8-foot bear in the shoulder. Instead I just show him as the forest flashes past my eyes in slow motion. My torso hits the ground first. My head and my legs tumble after it.

"Nessie, love, it's very serious when you hit your torso," he scolds, but being a doting grandfather, he doesn't sound mad. As if in response to that, he turns to fold up the chair and stick it in a corner.

I groan loudly. Clearly, we're not leaving any time soon.

Injuries at the T1 level are very rare, if only because the spine is encased by the ribcage that high up. During my first year of life, I had to wear a back brace to stabilize my thorax, because Black turned it into a nest of twigs. "I'm going to see how serious this concussion is, and then we'll see about the rest of your body."

"It wasn't a concussion," I mumble.

With flair, Carlisle takes a little black flash light out of his white lab coat. He flashes one of the little white lights in my right eye, and asks me to follow it. "Such beautiful eyes," he says to himself as he begins assailing my left eye. I roll them. Flattered, however, I smile with pleasure.

Carlisle asks me to lie back down. I drop down unceremoniously, while Daddy lifts my legs onto the examination table.

In the next thirty minutes, I'm stripped down as Carlisle bends, touches and prods my torso and legs. In spite of Rose's loving care, my leg muscles do look withered. They look like they ought to be in the body of a 10-year-old, not a 16-year-old. I try not to look at them, instead focusing on Carlisle's face.

There are yellowing bruises dotting my calves and thighs. Daddy lets out a horrified breath.

"I bruise all the time," I tell them breezily.

The blood circulation to my torso and lower limbs has been hampered from lack of movement, therapy notwithstanding. Consequently, I bruise like a peach, from slamming my legs into the legs of cafeteria tables, chairs, heavy metal doors as I try to fling them open, among other things.

I almost laugh at their horrified expressions. All three of them gape at me like I've lost my mind. "For all we know, none of these came from the tree incident."

Carlisle looks unconvinced. Daddy's looking at me with wonderment, with an expression I can only described as fondly amused irritation, and a deep longing. I recognize it as his "your mother reincarnate" expression. Rose is gnawing down on her lip, looking like she wants to cry.

"Look," I say impatiently, gesturing in the general direction of the bruises. "They're turning _yellow. _These are old bruises. There's no need to _freak_."

"Renesmee…" Carlisle admonishes gently. I smile sheepishly at him, flashing my dimples. Simultaneously, I shrug my shoulders. I can't _feel _bruising, I'm inclined to point out. The "Mommy Reincarnate" expression hasn't left my father's face, but Carlisle and Rose look mollified.

"I'm going to turn you around, Nessie," he says. In the blink of an eye, I'm flopped onto my belly, straining my neck to see what the fuss is about.

Carlisle sucks in a breath. He frowns as he detects what I presume are fresh contusions. I crane my neck back to try and catch a glimpse. I see nothing. Curious, I stretch out my arm, feeling the bony flesh of my back. I find Carlisle's fingers – he chuckles, amused, as I flick them off – to feel a hotter, tender patch of skin.

Daddy lets out a moan of pain. "You've bruised your pelvic region," he tells me.

"It's nothing major, son," Carlisle assures him, forgetting to whom he is speaking.

My father lives in a constant state of paranoia. Daddy's been known to assume I was falling ill with the swine flu because I _sneezed. _Once, he assumed I'd been kidnapped because I didn't answer my phone. As we speak, he's probably assuming the worst - like the bruises are signs of my eminent death by falling. My father makes a hypochondriac with OCD look sane – like that Giraffe in Madagascar.

Dad glares at me.

"It's just a contusion. There doesn't seem to be any internal bleeding. We can treat it with TENS stimuli and a strong anti-inflammatory."

Carlisle continues running his fingers up the contours of the bones in my back. As I said, he finds nothing worth panicking over.

Within minutes, he's helping me sit up. Propped up by my arms, legs dangling, I smile smugly at Rose and Daddy.

"See, Daddy?" I pipe up smugly. _There's nothing wrong with me._

"I wouldn't say _that,_" he says. His voice battles an infliction of amusement and irritation. "You have absolutely no sense of self-preservation."

I ignore Daddy. "Are we done?" I ask eagerly.

As we speak, Carlisle unfolds the chair from the corner. I grab my jeans from where Rose folded them on a corner, ready to get dressed – until Carlisle kills my buzz in cold blood. He squats down and takes out a scratchy hospital gown the color of mint from a cabinet underneath the examination table.

"I'd still like to run an MRI scan," Carlisle explains. A splutter of indignation escapes my lips almost of its own accord. Didn't he _just _say everything's fine?

"How long is _that _going to take?" I ask, irritable. "I need to be somewhere tonight."

My father snorts. "The only place _you _need to be in tonight is your bed."

"Daddy," I plead. _I need a distraction, badly. _The unspoken fact of the matter is that I'm more scared than hurt. _I'm going to have nightmares, _I think. I catch my reflection in a small, raised window at the top of the exam room. My gold-speckled green eyes are wide; the "doe-like eyes" mumbo-jumbo coming into play without me even trying. I can see his resolve crumbling. For all the strength of the Victorian stick up his ass, Dad does _want _me to have fun every now and then.

I turn to Carlisle. "If the MRI comes out fine, can I go to this thing?" I ask him pleadingly. This time, I do bat my eyelashes a little and raise the pitch of my voice. With narrowed eyes, Dad gives me the evil eye.

Carlisle hesitates before answering. If I'd been four, he would've caved immediately.

"I don't see a problem with you going out, so long as long as you don't strain yourself and come home early."

_Halleh-fucking-llujah. _I wonder how such a reasonable man could be at the helm of the Adams (Cullen) Family. It's like their brains are incapable of logic.

"I'll just put these on," I say, snatching my jeans and slipping them on quickly. Even at the fastest speed attained by my vampire-like arms, it takes me a couple of minutes to slip into jeans, socks and a long-sleeves t-shirt. I have to wriggle like a fish flapping in water to pull them up past my ass.

"I'd rather not parade around in a flimsy hospital gown," I explain. The minty color of the gown is going to make my pallor ghostly, and I'm wearing a bra the color of a cherry. It's been embarrassing enough to have my grandfather and my Victorian-aged father see it – I don't need for an entire hospital to follow their lead.

Done and dressed, I swivel out of the examination table and into the chair. Dad glowers at his own father, his expression stiff and reeking of betrayal. I bite back the urge to laugh at him as he holds the door open.

Out in the triage desk, the nurse waves flirtatiously at my grandfather, ignoring his three children are there. Luckily, Carlisle pretends to be obtuse. Above the nurse's head, a mechanical clock is ticking. I glance at the clock. It's 7:30. With a little bit of luck, I'll be out of here by 9:00.

The clock reminds me of something urgent. I drag in a breath of cold air, and spin the chair towards Rose. The comment is intended for my grandfather's benefit – but it's embarrassing. It's been five hours since I went through my own lovely version of urinating. I suffer from a spastic bladder, which means I'm at a high risk of peeing in my pants. The opposite – a flaccid bladder – is at a higher risk of rupturing _but _won't easily soil its owner. I am vain enough to think that rupturing my bladder seems far more palatable than peeing in my pants. I don't want it to happen inside the MRI machine, as much as I despise the thing.

"I need to, erm – _pee,_" I mumble elegantly.

"Did you bring a catheter?" Carlisle asks, as though we're talking about the weather and not my urethra. I turn scarlet. Daddy's standing nearby, and this is almost as embarrassing as talking about menstruation in his presence. It doesn't help that he was raised in the most sexually repressive environment in human history.

"Yeah," I say sardonically, without speaking a beat. "It's in the pocket of my jeans."

Carlisle's brow is furrowed in confusion. For a second, he squints at my buttocks, as if expecting one of them to be raised by a catheter's package. He's always been immune to any form of sarcasm from me. I think it's 'cause he's deluded himself into thinking I'll be four until the end of time. Granddaddy lives a content existence pretending that my breasts never grew in and I still listen to everything my father says.

"No, Grandpa, I didn't bring a catheter," I say finally in deadpan, before he reaches the inevitable conclusion that there is no catheter to be found.

Carlisle nods, clearly at ease with the pleasant topic of my bladder. "There should be an intermittent one in the nurse's station in the 4th floor," he offers, in that bizarre detached kindness typical of doctors. "I'll go get it."

My mouth falls open in horror, as though as he's suggested committing murder on my behalf.

"I can do it," I cough out through my shame. I'm equal parts offended at being babied, _and _at having my spastic bladder discussed as casually as Nana's springtime tulips. "Rose, dear?"

I spin the chair around. Rose's heels click as she follows behind me.

"I'll see you in Block A," Rose sighs, stalking after me. Block A is where all the high-tech equipment is, from the MRI machine to the radiology equipment. We both happen to be well-acquainted with both, as my grandfather uses them regularly to treat secondary symptoms to my broken spine. I don't have to turn around to see Daddy and Carlisle disappear into the mazes of passageways leading to Block A.

Once we reach the elevators, I back up the chair against the elevator wall. Rose follows after me. In a rare accessibility faux-pas, the elevator's buttons are raised so high I can't _reach _the damn thing. I wait for Rose to enter and press the little button before we are raised up to the fourth floor.

"I'm sorry," I mumble through my teeth.

"Whatever for?" Rose sounds genuinely confused. Sheepishly, I gesture in the general direction of my lap, where my bursting bladder would be urging its owner to pee. As is best for the wheelchair-bound, I follow tight schedules where shitting and pissing are concerned.

Rose mulls over my words for a couple of minutes, remaining expressionless. People accuse my Aunt of being blunt, but she isn't needlessly so. Finally, she opens her pretty, plump mouth.

"If you're apologizing for being irresponsible and _stupid _about your health, then I accept your apology." Rose gives me a sideways glance, her dainty nose turned up with contempt. Then she squats down, kissing me on the cheek. "If you're apologizing for the need to go to the bathroom, then I should apologize to _you. _I like to think I raised you to not feel ashamed about yourself."

She tucks in a strand of way-ward hair behind my ear, stroking my cheekbone with her thumb.

Minutes later, with the most beautiful woman in upstate New York behind me, I ask a passing nurse if she has an intermittent catheter stored somewhere. She recognizes me as a Cullen, and acquiesces kindly. The hollows of my cheeks pool with blood as the nurse hands me an intermittent catheter in its plastic packaging. Her expression, however, is one of kindness. Judging by her age, however, the woman has probably emptied more bedpans than I have used a catheter to relieve myself.

My embarrassment is dumb. I thank her sheepishly.

With Rose on my tail, I tuck the catheter in between the wheels of my chair and one of my limp legs. There's an accessible bathroom in the Reception area, meaning that she and I will have to exit the ER and go out into the drizzle. For all its ramps and soft turns, the hospital is sorely lacking in accessible bathrooms.

The two little boys in the waiting room have vanished.

The booming albeit rough voice of an old man reaches us all the way in the elevator. There is a tuft of salty white hair on his pale, sagging skin. Even with a back as crooked as a question mark, he must've been tall in his youth. I recognize him as Buzz Hemlich's grandfather. I've never been introduced to him in that capacity, but there _are _traces of my aspiring lover in the sharpness of his nose and the shape of his jaw. His two beady, black eyes are nothing like his grandson's, and yet they are the same shape.

"That's Buzz's grandpa," I tell Rose, as I push myself across the ER.

Rose lets out a giggle, sounding more like a Justin Bieber aficionada than a century-old vampire. There is nothing more thrilling in Rose's life than Buzz's undying, goofy love. I don't have to look up to see she's glowing, as she thinks Buzz is a good prospect. He "comes from a long line of Yale graduates, he's a linebacker and he comes from a solid fortune." His family owns a considerable amount of stock with Domino's Pizza. I personally find nothing admirable in making money by fattening the nation by selling globs of fat slapped onto a slice of sugary flour, but Rose does. Whenever boys are mentioned, she morphs into the lovechild of Cupid and Mrs. Bennett from _Pride and Prejudice_. I bet she's already naming my children with Buzz, oblivious to the fact that I find tripe sausage more appealing than the one hanging down Buzz's pants.

"Has he introduced you to him?" Rose says in a flustered whisper. By her tone, you'd think she holds an introduction to Buzz's family in the same esteem as getting accepted into college. Her voice drips with pride. Typically disdainful of the elderly, Rosalie is flashing a luminescent smile in my future grandfather-in-law's direction.

"You should go say hi," Rose says, virtually rolling on the balls of her feet. I'm disinclined to agree – there's an unused _catheter _in between my legs, I'm barefoot, and…There's no need to add tinder to the fire of Buzz's affections.

My future in-law is retelling some kind of story to Carlisle's groupie. His r's are rough, his w's are v's and he accents his vowels oddly, but his English itself is flawless. What's making it difficult to understand him is the way he wheezes. It's as if the run from his car to the ER has left him breathless.

Suddenly, Rose shoves the chair. The force of her push is enough to send me barreling in his general direction. I cross - or rather the chair crosses - the considerable distance between the elevators and the triage desk without lifting one arm. I react quickly enough to regain control of the chair, propelling it backwards before crashing against his bony knees. Even crooked and withered with age, the man is tall.

"into my carr, ven - eet dos not mather, I haf in-zoo-rrance - "

The man stops. He sniffs the air as though he can physically _smell _the harsh acidic scent of the urine bursting in my bladder, and is disgusted by it. I look up to meet his stare. It's usually demeaning to have to look up to converse, but this is downright _humiliating. _ He squints at me with his dark, beady eyes. There is a moment of silence as his eyes re-focus, and I find myself under the force of his stare. From the crown of my mahogany hair, past my golden-speckled emerald eyes, his eyes scrutinize me. They linger on my useless legs, where they look even punier without shoes.

"Sorry," I mumble.

Under shame, my skin prickles, heating up under his stare. Slowly, I back up the chair, with the pretense of maneuvering around him. When I propel the chair forward, though, I make an effort to slam one of the chair's wheels against his knees. The spinners on it are made of titanium.

He growls, before muttering something under his breath. It's in a foreign language, but I can tell it's nothing pleasant. Now that I'm nearly underneath the vent that it his mouth, I can smell his breath.

It's absolutely putrid.

* * *

Tears building, I spin into the maze of hallways leading away from the ER – and Buzz's grandfather - at a superhuman speed. Underneath me, the chair wheels start to screech under the pressure of moving so quickly. The titanium frame begins to tumble from side to side like a rocking boat being shoved everywhere by a current.

"Damn it," I spit.

Irritably, I loosen my grip on the chair wheels. Chugging down on my lips, I suck in a breath, waiting for the chair to stabilize. It's an ultra-lightweight wheelchair, a compact model and a low back meant to increase the user's agility. It's all worth shit where I'm concerned. The damn chair can't move as fast as I can get it to move. The friction of the wheels against the ground, if I move too quickly, can burn the wheels' rubber. Friction can also cause enough force for me to slam out of the chair, with my body ricocheting like a rock off a catapult.

For a moment, I consider slamming the breaks on the chair, but I fear the sudden stop will send me flying. Instead, I re-grip onto the chair wheels and push them in the opposite direction. Luckily, nobody is watching my hands propel the spinning wheels backwards. In human hands, that would've caused blisters. I have my father's hands - and artists' hands - and I'm vein enough to want to keep the delicate knuckles and lengthy fingers fully on display. I don't wear finger-less gloves. I dismiss the unpleasant thought that I may need to start pretty quickly, unless I start to move the chair around as a human would.

Accident averted, I slow down. It's not like the speed-demon stunt gave me much of a head start on Rosalie. Behind me, the staccato of her heels announces her presence, like a goddamned bell on a cat. Since I can't run from her, I decide to confront her.

Far too quickly, I spin my metal prison around with such force the chair tumbles on its axis. For a second, I fear it's going to fall sideways and I'm going to spill out of it like a wave. I freeze, shutting my eyes tightly ready for a fall. When it doesn't come, I open my eyes. With a new surge of strength, I cut the distance between Rose and I with three powerful strides. The closer I move to her, the more the expression of sweet concern vanished. By the time I'm so close to her my knees are touching her shins, Rosalie looks like I have. gotten. food. in. her. hair.

"Don't ever manhandle me like that again, Rosalie."

My voice is low, both in pitch and tone, and its cracking. Tears are burning my eyes as they threaten to spill. Not a second passes before they do spill out of my eyes, heating up my already boiling cheeks. I'm always carried places where I don't want to go because Black took away my ability to move independently. For all its flaws, without the chair, I can't move. It's the source of my sense of agency. Even that, like my body, isn't fully mine to control. Rosalie just rubbed that aggressively in my face, literally shoving me into the most humiliating encounter of my entire life. Frustration bubbles hotly into tears that spill out of my eyes. I bite back a sob, sticking a fist in my mouth.

"Don't you _dare _blame me for how that old bastard - "

"I'm NOT!" I yell. I punctuate by statement with a screech of rage.

I'm stared at often. It's a fact of life, living in the chair. I split people into two basic types: those that stare, and those that try not to. After years of watching parents deal with their children's pointing, I blame the staring on society's inept parents. People are morbidly curious about wheelchairs, because they don't see them. Going out in the chair is hard. If and when they the public sees wheelchairs, they're treated as a sign of illness or weakness.

Rosalie likes to play dumb pretend I'm stared at for the same reasons she is. "Of course people stare at you," she'll coo, as if it's the most self-evident thing in the world. "You're gorgeous." It's not a stupid theory. I've found that people somehow associate my beauty and the chair. Almost invariably, the whispered line goes like: "Such a beautiful girl. It's such a pity she's disabled," or the alternative, "She's so beautiful for a handicap." There's a High School variation, too. "I'd tap Cullen – that bitch is fuckhot - but I'm not sure I'm into crippled pussy." People without a sense of personal space will come up and caress me like I'm a porcelain doll on display, or play with my hair like I'm the latest toy issued by Barbie. I'm looked at with apprehension. Sometimes, I'm looked at with pity.

Less than five minutes ago, for the first time in 16 years, I was looked at with disgust.


	4. The Manifestation of Sadness

**The Manifestation of Sadness **

I wake up the following morning feeling like I may as well _have _drunk my weight in beer at a party. Light is streaming through the window, past my pink drapes, and flooding by bedroom. It hurts my eyes as though I'm a vampire of the Anne Rice variety. Groaning, I throw one arm on top of my head to shield it from the light. My eyes sting, my face feels puffy, and I have a throbbing headache. I decide not to share that last tidbit of information with the cast of _Les Mis _that is otherwise known as my family. Next thing I'll know, Carlisle will be stuffing pressure-lowering drugs in my system in an attempt to ward off Autonomic Dysreflexia. Sluggishly, I switch positions – first turning my leg and then grabbing on to the edge of the bed opposite me - to flop onto my belly, with an arm shielding me from the light.

I doze off for a little longer.

Daddy's panic attack – surprise, surprise – proved unfounded. The MRI showed that there was nothing (clinically) wrong with my brain, excepting the fact that it doesn't receive signals from half of my body. He, Rose and I returned home in a terse silence. I was too tired to give a shit, and too angry at the two of them for subjecting me to an unnecessary medical procedure. Since Rose was acting like an Ice Queen after our hallway spat, it was Nana that tucked me in. I let her fuss over me to her heart's content. Once I finished with the catheter, Nana helped me put on my pajamas before stretching out my lower limbs for me. I passed out midway through knee flexion exercises, before being lovingly tucked in.

This morning, I find my anger has been slightly muted. It may have to do with the fact that I'm still not fully awake.

The chair is stationed near my bed at a strange angle. I drag it closer towards me. Locking the brakes, I drag my body into it. I like to live on the edge by _not _locking the brakes – ha, ha, ha – but this is what a hangover must feel like and I don't want to fall on my ass. Luckily, the space of my bedroom is cleared of any obstacles and I don't have to be on my proverbial toes. Out in the world, I have to maneuver the chair like Formula 1 driver, which requires full use of my (currently) faulty mental faculties. I make it easily into the bathroom, with its lowered sink, many grab bars and full-body mirror. I groan in horror as I see my reflection in the latter.

I look like a motherfucking troll doll from the 1980s.

Whining irritably, I avoid my reflection as I chug down some water and sprinkle more on my red, puffy face. Why I'm whining is beyond me; there aren't any indulgent adults nearby to humor my tantrum. Pouting, I wash my hands thoroughly, and I take out a different catheter – a Speedicath - from where it's kept in one of the drawers. Back at home, I try to climb out of the chair as much as possible when doing _this_. The smell of urine _does _cling to the chair. As much as everyone in the house is aware of the crudest reality of paraplegia, I don't want the reminder to literally _cling _to the chair. On the toilet, I use the grips to pull myself up and lower my pajama pants, careful to keep them above my knees. There's a little table, with a mirror and antibacterial soap, next to the grips in the bathroom; I use it to open up the catheter – packaged, it looks like a syringe. I prop up the mirror in between my thighs using my panties and lead the rubber length into my urethra. The pee squirts out of a green cylinder underneath the rubber length like I'm holding a plastic wiener. Done with all that business, I throw it in the nearby trash, clean-up my privates and lift up my silk pajama pants.

In spite of my pointed effort not to look, I still catch my reflection in the lowered mirror as I wash my hands. I look like a constipated infant, red-faced and swollen. Briefly, I consider dragging a comb through the blob of curls that is my hair this morning, but I decide Rose might act less bitchy today if she gets to comb through it.

With a comb squeezed in between my legs, I roll to Rosalie's room. Sometimes, I wonder if Nana is aware of the invention of the concrete wall. (As she is my Nana, however, I refrain from such snarky comments. Like Carlisle, she likes to pretend I'm four. I indulge her wishful thinking. It works best for us all that way). There's glass paneling in the hallway from my room to Rose's. As I roll down the hallway to Rose's bedroom, I find that the drizzle from last night has turned into snow. The driveway is blanketed in the offensive white substance, but gaging by the sun blazing overhead, the snow won't last long. Unfortunately for me, maneuvering a wheelchair through a puddle of slush isn't significantly easier than maneuvering one through snow.

Rosalie's room is empty when I reach it.

"Rose?" I call out groggily. My voice sounds thick with sleep. It appeals to all of their protective instincts, which bodes well for me. As angry as I am at Rose, I don't deal well with her being angry at me. It makes ruins my entire day, and as common knowledge, my sunny disposition is easily disturbed.

"She's in the garage," Jasper yells back, loudly enough for me to hear. I perform a cursory glance over the 2nd floor's east wing. Jasper and Alice's door is shut, which is a good indicator as any that I shouldn't touch it with a 10-foot-pole. Rosalie and Emmett's room is empty, and Daddy's – sandwiched in between both rooms – is empty, too. Of all of them, Dad is the only one that doesn't have a bed. For the sake of my sanity, I don't dwell on the reasons behind that. Since I didn't actually care about having my hair look any more presentable, I toss the brush to Rosalie's bed. She can take it back to my room.

Further, since I have no stake in looking attractive for Dumb, Dumber or Daddy Dearest, I decide to head straight down for breakfast. My morning improves considerably when I roll into the kitchen. Nana, God bless her heart, is making pancakes. Carlisle is sitting on the kitchen table, legs crossed at the ankle. The Brady Bunch that is their progeny is nowhere to be found, lord be thanked.

"Morning," I say to them, in naturally dulcet tones. I give them a toothy smile and flash both of my dimples. Both of them beam at me in response, and my anger is lifted. I could come in with my teeth bared and smelling of garlic, and they'd beam at me regardless. My grandparents _always _beam at me like I'm their own personal brand of sunshine. To thank them for their kindness, I act like I am. They pretend I never need to be disciplined, and defend me when I am, even when I'm acting like an insufferable brat. In return, I never give them a reason to do discipline me. A lot of the time, they blame Emmett for my short-comings, believing him to be a corrupting influence. If that works for them, though, who am I to ruin it for them?

"Good morning, sweetheart," Nana says chirpily. I wonder if that woman is capable of yelling.

"Did you sleep well, my darling?" Grandpa asks, in what is a sad attempt at nonchalance. The man is an awful liar, and his eyes cloud over with concern. He's studying me carefully.

"I passed out cold," I say. It's not a lie. Even if it were one, I can lie circles around a Congressman on election day, and look convincing, too. I roll the chair into the emptied space at the head of the table, and stretch out my arms across it. I mull over how much more pleasant my life would be if the Brady Bunch took off for a week and left the three of us to our own devices.

My relationship with my grandparents is one of simple giving, firmly cemented on our mutual belief that I'm the best thing to grace the universe. Unfortunately, there are dreams that cannot be. I'm the responsibility of Edward A. Cullen and Rosalie L. Hale. While my grandparents employ loving patience and gentle admonishment as parenting techniques, Rose and Daddy are as unstable as Britney Spears circa 2010. They spoil me rotten one minute, and then upbraid me for being a brat in the next. The question shouldn't be about _why _I'm crazy. The question should be _why _I'm not more of a stark-raving, emotionally unstable lunatic.

Nana and Granddaddy just spoil me, no questions asked. As if following my line of thought, Nana serves me a plate of fresh fruit sprinkled with granola and a mango smoothie.

"Thank you, Nana," I say cutely, batting my eyelashes. I don't overdo it. It doesn't work as well on Nana as it does on her husband. She kisses me on the forehead, though, besotted.

"Why are you here?" I ask Granddaddy, midway through a gulp of the smoothie and a bite of banana. The yellow liquid streams down the delicate curve of my chin.

"I mean, it's great that you are and all, I'm just wondering," I amend. As the head of a division at the hospital, Granddaddy shouldn't have to work nights or weekends, but he chooses to do so. He really is a very considerate man. It typically means I don't see him on Saturday mornings. Instead, I'm usually regaled with the ball of unrestrained, toddler-like, bat-shit crazy that is Emmett Cullen. My life is unfair.

"There was an accident last night and they needed me in traumatology to ensure there was no neurological damage," Granddaddy explains. I hiss in a breath, suddenly horrified. I drop my spoonful of fruit and granola. Bits of granola splatter everywhere – I feel one of them fall down my bra.

I can't imagine what it would feel like to suffer from trauma to the spine or brain knowing what life is like without such a chronic injury. I feel a surge of frustration on his behalf.

Granddaddy crushes it quickly, though. "The boy will be fine," he says, sensing my worry. "From a neurological perspective, everything is intact. I stayed in until the wee hours of the morning, which is why I was given this shift off. The orthopedics team is looking at him early this morning. It seems like he fractured his knee in multiple places."

Nana replaces my empty fruit plate with a thick stack of pancakes soaking in syrup. I thank her with an appreciative grunt.

"That's great," I say dumbly, inhaling the rest of my mango smoothie. Realizing what I've just said, I blush. "I mean, not that he hurt himself – that's terrible – but that he'll be fine. And that you're here and all that."

Nana sets down a glass of milk in front of my buckwheat pancakes. Granddaddy smiles at me like he thinks I'm cute, his ocher eyes twinkling. He ignores the bits of granola in the dark brown blob of my hair, the yellow stain on my pajama camisole, and the maple syrup dripping down my chin.

I have no such luck with his daughter.

"Ness, you look awful!" Alice announces, walking in through the door. She takes in my messy appearance and wrinkles her nose. Taking a large bite of the pancake, I chew it with my mouth open for the sake of annoying her. Granddaddy chuckles. Alice tsks. The little pixie strolls to the back of the chair and begins to comb through my hair with her fingers. At their best, my mahogany, dark red curls hang down my back in flawless waves. As of right now, they're piled on top on my head like a French poodle. I swat her hands away.

"No, I look like I just woke up," I correct her, taking a gulp of a glass of milk Nana set before me. I'm inclined to burp – Alice would freak – but I don't. I want to keep my Nana under the pitifully deluded impression that she raised a lady. She'd die if she ever heard my inner monologue. I make Emmett look like a candidate for sainthood.

"You have such pretty hair," Alice bemoans dramatically, "And look how you throw it away!" By her tone, you'd think I'd just rejected a scholarship in favor of becoming a cancan dancer at the Moulin Rouge. I roll my eyes.

"I'm going swimming in an hour," I retort. "I don't need to look like a runway model for that."

Not that I'd ever look like a runway model half-naked. Naked, I look like some mutant combination of two different bodies. Courtesy of Jacob Black, there are four sets of scars across the length of my back, raw and pink even after all these years, crisscrossing the white flesh. In spite of my family's best efforts, my legs _look_ paralyzed, withered and bony. My abdomen is flat because I'm skinny, not because it's toned, but somehow it _sags. _All of it is in stark contrast to firm, toned arms, a swan-like neck and perky breasts. A couple of months ago, I heard Cassidy call me a "butter-face" – "Everything is deformed but-her-face." Being the social genius that she is, she drenched her statement in fake pity. The words stung, and sting still. Against my better judgment, I've been thinking of myself in that capacity lately.

Before the bitterness can creep into my voice, I stuff a fistful of pancake into my mouth. I continue to persistently work my way through the stack of pancakes with tremendous dedications. I chew in silence, while Alice retrieves a comb and makes a French braid out of my hair. "There," my Aunt says when she finishes, with a tinkling giggle. "Look how pretty your hair looks, princess."

Both of my Aunts gloat at my beauty as though they'd engineered me personally, showering me with compliments at every opportunity. I was the doll they'd never had, and I was – and am still dressed, if not directly by them – in the most beautiful clothes money could buy. Under their loving care, I grew into a beauty. There hadn't been anything to be done about the slow withering of muscles that had never been used, in spite of hours of physical therapy. Alice and Rose, however, are either oblivious or impervious to the crippled legs and fucked-up back, concealed now by a camisole and pajama pants. I catch my reflection on the gleaming kitchen countertop. _I still look like I drowned an entire bottle of tequila last night, _I tell her in deadpan_. _Alice giggles, but shakes her head.

"Excuse me," I say dryly, pushing the chair back. My voice sounds groggy. I've already shoved into Alice as if intending to steamroll over her. Alice steps aside while I put the plate on my lap and roll over to the sink. Typically, Nana would thank me as though the plate is a child I've rescued from a burning building. Today, she accepts it with a tentative smile, as though she's scared I'll lash out. My lips curl upwards in an attempt at a smile. It doesn't reach my eyes.

Through no fault of her own, Alice has tapped straight into my raw nerves. I'm usually able to keep my disgust at my mangled body at bay. Rosalie _did _raise me to be more of a pusher than a push-over. Neither Alice nor Rose has ever shown the slightest hint of disgust or pity, even though she deals with my damaged body regularly. Under their example, I deal with its needs in stride, taking the unromantic realities of paraplegia with a pinch of dry wit. If the two _gorgeous _women that help me care for the object of my disgust weren't disgusted, then why would I be? My self-disgust stems from frustration – and like the frustration, I was good at keeping it from corroding me from the inside out.

Tears burn out of my eyes as I enter the elevator. Apparently, I wasn't that good. It took one soggy old man to turn me into a weeping jumble of insecurities. Mr. Hemlich's _disgust _last night destroyed whatever restraining mechanism I had left. Slumped over and teary, I go up the elevator. I try not to sniff until I reach my bathroom. At that point, I have to stick a fist in my mouth to keep from sobbing. It works. My tears are mostly silent as they cascade into my mango-covered collarbone.

For the sake of my own mood, and of the senile old man, I tried not to think of Mr. Hemlich's expression. Depression _is _a threat, being in the chair. It does take Herculean strength to put up with the frustration of inaccessibility, stares and general weakness. I know better than to dwell on things I can't change, which is why I barely think of my mother. I _tried_ not to mull over Mr. Hemlich stuck in the MRI tube with Daddy listening in, but my attempts were futile. Rather, though, I think the impact of his stare went far deeper. My subconscious processed the sneer of his lips pulled over his dentures, and the messages in his beady black eyes.

They assail me as I change into a one-piece black bathing suit. I roll into my closet. Careful to face away from the body-length mirror, I use the necessary grips to take off my pants and camisole. At my level of injury – T1 – I have limited control over abdominal muscles and the diaphragm. To help me breathe, I use an abdominal binder. I take it off to put on my bathing suit.

Mr. Hemlich's eyes seemed to recognize I was pretty, but seemed duly unimpressed. In fact, I was reminded of Cassidy and her cohorts. In their eyes, the chair is big enough of a cancerous tumor. In light of it, everything from the luminous dark hair to the sparkling, gold-and-green eyes looks plain. Intellectually, I know I am _prettier, _and that they don't hold a candle to me. It's all part of a vampire allure that is biological fact – as much as it's biological fact that I can't feel anything below the chest. "It's not like they'll find her _attractive_," Joanna Lynch had said. "She's pretty, but…" That's what Mr. Hemlich's eyes seemed to be saying. Old and disabled himself, Mr. Hemlich probably knows better than to romanticize the chair like his grandson does. _She's pretty, I'll give her that _– but not pretty enough to compensate for the hassles of living with a cripple.

* * *

My arm rises, fingers stretching outwards as if to touch the vaulted glass ceiling. Droplets of chlorine-drenched water rivulet down my skin, sparkling under the sunlight. My hand hits the water, and with the other arm I twist.

_One...  
Two...  
Three...  
Breathe..._

My left arm rotates, rising in the air and glistening with droplets of water. The right side of my head leaves the water. I take in one long, deep breath before delving back in again. My fingers brush the tiled, shallow end of the pool. Almost giddy, I spin around quickly to face a seemingly endless stretch of water. Floating offers me a respite from sitting in the chair or lying down.

_One...  
Two...  
Three...  
Breathe..._

I spin my right arm around, stretching it as if to touch the glass ceiling before bringing it back down. What's best about this – my body burgeoning in the water, the droplets glistening on my skin, the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears - is the _freedom_. The air lovingly bites my left cheek as it leaves the water, for me suck in another breath. In the water, I can almost forget the crippling restraints of physics. Supported partly by the water and made lighter, the dead weight of my legs and torso doesn't feel as burdensome. Outside the water, the chair is both my jailor and my emancipator, limiting me as much as it frees me. In the water, I can _move _out of my own devices, as fast as I want.

_One...  
Two...  
Three...  
Breathe..._

The sun streams down the glass window, and underneath it, my skin glows.

Left arm out, right cheek out. In 15 strides, I've reached the other end of the Olympic-sized pool. There's a floating device wrapped around my torso to support it, but I leave my legs dangling. It makes it easier to turn sharply, maintaining the same amount of speed. Around me, people are willing to disregard the fact that I'm swimming as fast as if I were being propelled by four, heavily-muscled limbs. I'm swimming as fast as Kyle Phillips, a senior back at school whose biceps are the size of my torso. Aware of how happy it makes me, however, neither Daddy nor Rose has the heart to tell me to pretend to swim like a paraplegic girl of 120 pounds. Further benefitting me is Kyle's self-involved nature. Kyle only stares at me when I get in and out of the pool, either to try to conceal idle curiosity as I transfer or to gape at my rock-hard nipples like they're shooting rainbows.

_One...  
Two...  
Three...  
Breathe..._

The only other person in the pool on Saturday mornings is Mrs. Crawford, a post-menopausal version of Cassidy. Unlike Kyle, she's an awful mixture of self-involved and gossip-hungry. Her son Nate and I go to school together. Since Esme's arrival, she was somewhat debunked as the epitome of the perfect society wife – Esme is more prolific, more charitable and less fake. As svelte as Mrs. Crawford's figure is, I doubt tits as large as hers would stand upright after 40 years of battling gravity. She hugs me every now and then like she thinks I'm Tiny Tim, by smothering my face between her tits. No human nipple should be that hard.

Further attesting to her self-involvedness, she once asked me why I was in "that thing", pointing to the wheelchair like I propelled myself on a hermit crab. Her voice was drenched in pity, but I presumed she was asking if perhaps there was something so tragically wrong with Esme's uterus that I'd suffered some accident at birth.

_One...  
Two...  
Three...  
Breathe..._

After the fourth stroke, my fingers touch the edge of the pool. Inside my chest, my heart is pounding, throbbing in my ears. When my right cheek rises for a breath, I spot a figure approaching. It is the illustrious Mrs. Crawford. Her D&G sandals click on the pool, splattering against puddles of water. In an uncharacteristic posture, she's slumped over, and is walking tiredly. Usually, she walks around with chirpy authoritarianism – like a tiny, female Stalin. I decide to hurry up, lest we bump into each other in the dressing room.

_One...  
Two...  
Three...  
Breathe..._

I reach the other edge of the pool. Above me, the clock says its 11:30. I have been swimming for an hour and a half. It doesn't matter – I could swim for hours, hours and hours without getting tired. I'd live my life underwater if I didn't need to breathe. However, leaving _now _does have its perks.. It gives me ample time to cross from my lane to the handicapped pool lift, where my chair is parked. I paddle sidestroke across my lane, and duck under the line dividing mine from Kyle's. When I reach Mrs. Crawford's, she is at least 10 meters away from me. _Even _if I did swim slowly, it would be more than enough time for me to cross her lane three times over.

Oblivious to this fact, Mrs. Crawford stops as soon as she spots me, so quickly she could have swallowed water. She rises to her full height. She's breathing heavily, but I know it's all for show. Her heart is beating languidly.

"Nessie, take all the time you need!" she yells across the pool, so loudly I suspect she thinks I'm deaf, not only gimpy. "Don't worry about me! I can wait! I know this is hard for you, poor baby!"

The first time she did this, I thanked her with a sweet smile. Those were the days when I hadn't realized Mrs. Crawford talked _at _me, not _to _me. A little later, I pulled her aside and assured her she didn't need to give me 10 meters of legroom to cross a pool lane. Mrs. Crawford then launched into an impassioned 30-minute speech. Within 10 minutes, she called me selfless and brave, "for pretending to be able to do things when _everyone _knows it's awfully difficult for me." She patted me on the cheek and then pinched it like I was five, not fifteen. Today, I grunt and give her a half-hearted wave to acknowledge her.

The country-club had a pool lift installed a year ago, after a vicious battle with my family on the matter. Installing the pool lift meant that there was one less swimming lane available. The failure to install it was discriminatory. A plastic chair waits submerged for me to sit on it. Once I do, I strap myself in with a seatbelt-type harness and another for both my legs. Then I press the up button on the remote adjacent to the plastic chair, waiting for it to lift me out of the water. Kyle seems nowhere near done, and Mrs. Crawford is – miraculously – not gaping in my direction When Mrs. Crawford does look, she'll say things like: "Oh, the poor dear, look at her struggle!" or "Such a little trooper." We all know how strenuous it is to wait to be lifted places.

Once I'm out, I drag the chair closer to transfer out of the seat. Feet flat on the floor – even though I ought to be wearing shoes - I unfold the towel atop the chair's cushion and spread the towel across it to keep it dry. Finally, I swivel out of the lift and into the chair, wet bottom plopping onto the dry towel. My feet follow. Once in the chair, I cover my ugly legs with a towel.

I unlock the brakes, intending to leave this instant. It's easier said than done – the pool has been made for the able-bodied. The exit is lined by a series of doors, with tiny steps along the way and bipolar-like changes in the flooring. There's a thick plastic mat around the circumference of the pool. The chair wheels get caught on the holes in the rubber, and it sways unsteadily on the uneven ground. The mat stops abruptly where a five-inch step pops up, and the floor becomes stone. To go down the step, I have to spin the chair to angle it – not an easy feat in the Swiss-cheesed plastic mattress – so that it is directly in front of the door when I open it. Placing both hands above the axle of the chair wheels, I roll forward and then push backwards. When I roll forward again, I tuck my chin into my sternum and roll my shoulders forward, until the caster wheels go up in the air. With delicacy, I roll back and forth, finally rolling forward and down the 5-inch step.

Now would be a good time for Mrs. Crawford's cheer-leading.

* * *

It doesn't get any easier from there.

The only access to the female changing room, from the pool, is by a flight of stairs. This means that I have to roll out of the hallway and into the cold, marble lobby, to take the elevator. It's especially fun, dripping wet with a clinging bathing suit. The managerial staff stopped bitching about my "lack of decorum" in the lobby when Rosalie threatened to sue them for being inaccessible left and right. Since then, the Country Club manager has become an unbearable sycophant. His relentless ass-kissing has forced us to make a couple of appearances at courtesy Sunday brunches in the restaurant, which I find hysterical. The manager, a Mr. Fulton, wouldn't stop offering dishes until Granddaddy wiped one clean.

Much to my embarrassment the lobby is packed with Saturday-morning tennis players and their brunching wives. I cover my unsightly legs with the towel I was previously sitting on. Moistened by condensation, my typically silent wheelchair _squeaks _against the marble floors. As I'm below eye level, I pass unacknowledged until I reach the elevator. I have to stretch one arm out to poke the button. This is _awful_, waiting soaking wet in a lobby with pristinely-dressed pretentious fucks. Aside from polite smiles filled with pity, nobody even waves. In spite of that, I feel their gazes _burning _after me. Of all the Cullen kids, I elicit the most gossip, perhaps because the drama in my life is more glaringly obvious.

The female changing room and showers are on the same floor as the gym. I have to maneuver the chair through all of the contraptions and all the gym-goers. There's a rung in the threshold between the gym door and the door to the changing room, forcing me to pop a wheelie. Inside the changing room, things become slightly easier, if not by much. There are two rows of lockers against each wall, with two benches squeezed between them, creating four, tight pathways. The lockers and benches are packed closely together. The chair literally barely _squeezes _through, with both of my hands dragging against the bench-top and the wood-finished lockers, and no space for maneuvering. Although I haven't complained about the hell-hole that is the pool exit, I got pretty tired of leaving my stuff out in the open because I can't _reach _the lockers without setting up permanent residence there.

I transfer out of the chair and onto one of the benches. I still have to stretch out my arms to get the things out of the locker, bent over forward, because the bench isn't quite close enough to the locker. Luckily, my arms are long and my fingers lithe. It's easy to get things out, even with my stomach pressed up against my legs. My life would suck if I were Alice-sized.

My phone buzzes, atop my toiletries, clean towels and a change of clothes. I usually come in here before heading down to the pool. Handling a chair is hard enough down there without a big backpack complicating everything.

"Oh, great," I mumble sheepishly, turning the little device on. For every missed call I don't take, Daddy assumes I've either been kidnapped or am lying on the floor, inches from my death. There are _ten _missed calls from my father, scattered over 15 minute intervals for the two hours I've been here. Underneath him, I missed _three _calls from Buzz Hemlich and _two _from Simon Lowell. It's like they're in order of descending insanity. I look guiltily at the bottom two calls. Simon called me during the game, which he probably attended thinking I'd join him. He doesn't even like football. In my anger and exhaustion last night, I just sent him a quick text. _I can't make it. Sorry. Love you. _

I call my father.

"You need to start answering your phone!" Daddy barks immediately, sounding very much like 120-year-old, grumpy old geezer he is deep in his un-beating heart. "I didn't buy it for the sake of decoration."

"I didn't know my life was in mortal peril inside an indoor pool eight feet deep," I say. Somewhere near my father, Emmett snickers.

For normal, non-psychotic individuals, ten missed phone calls indicate an emergency. For the psycho with OCD that is my father, it's fairly normal behavior. Daddy lives in a constant state of paranoia. If I frown, it's because I'm about to become clinically depressed. If I don't take a bite out of a sandwich, I'm developing an eating disorder. If I forget to lock the chair brakes, I'm exhibiting self-destructive behavior. If I finish my homework inside the car the day it's due, it's because I've become a raging pothead.

"What if something happens to you?" Daddy demands, as if he really wanted to know an answer. "How would you call me?"

Trapping the phone between my shoulder and cheek, I use my free arms to take toiletries out of the locker. I push down the straps of my swimming suit and raise my body from the chair to pull it down.

"I'm sure the kidnappers would let me give you a heads up before running off with me," I retort, lifting each leg by the Velcro strap to my chest, aiming to take the swimsuit off.

"Don't joke about such matters, daughter," he snarls.

There's no point in arguing this with him. He _knows _that I'm doing laps, and hence cannot simultaneously answer my phone. He also knows that the pool lift is usually far away from the available lanes. As he speaks, I stuff the swimming suit into a plastic trousseau and wrap my ugly, skinny body in a towel.

"Can you come pick me up?" I ask, changing the subject. "I'll call you when I'm done."

"Don't you don't need me to teach you how to make a call?"

"Very funny, Daddy," I say. "Really, hilarious."

"Call me when you're done," he says, suddenly calmer.

"Love you," I say, hanging up.

I wheel over to the showers – the epitome of the country club's model accessibility. There's only one excuse for a handicapped-accessible shower. It's roughly big enough to fit a wheelchair, with two pull bars on each side of the wall. In between them is a flimsy plastic chair, like those old people unfold in their back porch. There's a rung in between the changing space outside the shower and the shower itself. The grab bars are about as useful as a clove of garlic to fight a vampire. They're there for show.

All of these things piss Rosalie off. I always quietly tell her, with varying degrees of patience, that people don't usually think about this shit. I don't spend all of my time worrying about homeless kids in Detroit. People just aren't wired to think about things outside their pea-brains, myself included.

The shower itself is awful. I have to crane my neck back to be hit by the water, and to fling my body around in the "bath chair" to get the water to hit my limbs. It takes so long I hear Mrs. Crawford walking in. As her scent assails my nostrils, I groan. I'm midway through coating my hair with "coconut-scented shea oils with vanilla extract." I've barely finished washing my legs – an especially difficult task sitting in a slanted surface, far away from the falling water - when she leaves. I'll have to bump into her. Finally done, though, I use one of the grab bars for leverage, to wriggle by body into my wheelchair. I wrap myself in a towel and leave.

Water flew out of the shower as I attempted to bathe, so the chair is moist all over and the ground has flooded. The spinners on the wheels are damp, and the wheels keep on _squeaking _to announce my presence. In spite of that, Mrs. Crawford doesn't spare me a glance.

The first time my wet chair wheels announced my presence, Mrs. Crawford immediately spoke to me. "You know, I admire people like you." Mrs. Crawford had patted me on the head like I was the family golden retriever. "If I had to live your life, well, I'd be sullen, depressed, angry – and yet look at you! You get out of bed every morning." Roughly translated, she said, "Your life sucks donkey balls. How have you not committed suicide yet?"

Julia Crawford is the combination of two evils, not the lesser one. She says _rude _things, like the people that mumble about how I slow everyone down, park in handicapped spots and unapologetically shove the chair around in malls. Mrs. Crawford's rudeness, however, is thinly veiled by her pity. She is _also _the kind of person that shoves their help up your ass, without any regard for your acceptance of it. Mrs. Crawford holds doors open for me when I'm _feet _away from her, yet slams them in my face when I'm right behind her.

I didn't know how to respond to her admiration that first time, so I gave her a half-hearted smile. Wiser and snarkier, I don't make those mistakes today.

"Your tan looks fantastic, Julia," I say. "You looked _so _pale and sickly last week. I was worried about you!" The tan looks the absolutely glaring opposite of fantastic. Chunks of her skin look like the brown leather on Jasper's ugly-ass 1950s recliner, which he keeps on his study to Alice's horror. I hope my compliment will encourage her to continue spraying herself with cankerous chemicals. Evil dies hard, so I'm not sure she'll be brought down by tanning spray. She'll have to be dragged down by Satan.

"Thank you," Mrs. Crawford says absent-mindedly.

Typically, her eyes will narrow into slits and she will look at me hatefully before the expression flashes away. To hide my insincerity, I would then flash Mrs. Crawford a blinding smile. It's one of those smiles I know leave people dazzled. Mrs. Crawford probably knows it's as false as her eyelashes, because she usually dazzles me back with a smile of her own. Today, however, neither happens – nor the glare, nor the smile. Today, she looks haggard. Her eyes are red-rimmed and she's slumped over as she rubs cocoa butter on her orange-colored, leathery skin. Usually, she hums Spice Girls hits to herself when she dresses. Today, she's silent. While my ears appreciate the break, I find myself concerned for the woman. I'm suddenly concerned for her. I _do _enjoy our little talks.

In the way an inmate prefers hanging out with fellow convicts to solitary confinement.

I slip on my bra and panties, and then slip on a pair of skinny jeans, wriggling around the bench like a fish out of water to manage. Finally, I put on a white, long-sleeved t-shirt. They're both from Gap, which in Rosalie and Alice's minds means "rack at the homeless shelter." To keep Alice off my back, I put on an ivory-colored, hand-stitched wrap around my torso. It's by Dianne von Furstenberg. I finish with matching beige suede boots. Finally, I wrap my hair in a towel. Throughout the entire time, Mrs. Crawford sits there, twiddling her thumbs absently. My concern grows as I wheel off to one of the mirrors. Mrs. Crawford hasn't said anything about how the wrap adds volume to my skinny, underfed frame.

There's something terribly wrong here.

"Julia?" I ask, with genuine concern. I roll closer towards where she's sitting, without squeezing the chair through the lockers. My bony knee is touching hers. "Is everything alright?"

She turns towards me, and immediately, I regret opening my stupid mouth.

Julia Crawford née Kennedy's mouth begins to waver, her lower lip shaking. "Wa ha ha!" she finally sobs, so loudly it sounds like mangled, maniacal laughter. Tears stream down her wrinkled cheeks, without ruining her tattooed eyeliner. Sobs rack her body as she throws her arms around me. I feel her breasts digging painfully against mine as she _loses her shit. _The woman is making "Hee, hee, hoo, ha," noises. She sounds like comedy sitcom characters when infants shoot out of their vaginas on television. I freeze in horror, paralyzed totally and not just in part. _I _can't judge people for crying, because I bawl like a baby all the time. In spite of that, I've never lost my composure like that in _front _of another person.

"There, there," I say awkwardly. I pat her on the back. I'm completely mortified, like Emmett must feel like when Rose and I start discussing tampons.

I'm so glad her eyelashes are fake, or I'd be covered in wet, black goo. She sniffs in front of me. An ugly green booger pops out of her nose, and she wipes it off with her wrist. Ew.

She mumbles something incoherently into my neck.

"I didn't catch that," I say, gently. Inside, my limited patience is growing thin. I have little tolerance for sob-fests, including my own.

"I thought that maybe you – you could talk to him – my poor baby! He's so depressed, and I – wa-ha-ha-wa!" Sobs wreck her body and she tightens her grip around me. I'm engulfed by the _sweet, sweet _scent of her body, and for a split second, I consider drinking. It would be so _easy_ to sink my teeth into her neck…My urge dies quickly, though. Her blood would probably kill my brain cells.

"Talk to whom?" I ask, working desperately to not sound impatient.

She sniffs, wiping her eyes. The tears have made her wrinkles show. The imperfection makes her look less despicable.

"Nate," she weeps.

I say nothing. This is more awkward than a vaginal exam, and twice as painful.

Nate Crawford and I haven't exchanged a _single _word in the last year. From the things I've heard him say, I'm not missing out on much.

"He broke his knee last night – fell out of a tree house - and he can't play this entire season! This is awful. Our lives are awful. I don't know what I ever did to deserve this… He feels like his life is over."

At that, another sob wrecks her body, and Mrs. Crawford bends over as if I just punched her in the stomach. It seems like a very tempting thing. Mrs. Crawford is sobbing as if Nate had _died. _I'm at the end of my tether. I have no tolerance for self-pity.

"He'll recover," I say flippantly, with more bite in my voice than I intended. Mrs. Crawford, however, thinks I'm mentally disabled, too. She tends to disregard whatever comes out of my mouth. When she's clear-headed, she'll attribute my heinous bedside manner to a bad case of Asperger's.

"I was thinking – you know _exactly _what this feels right, don't you?" says Mrs. Crawford as she wipes her tears. Her surgically-enhanced, cod-fish lips are still trembling, but she manages to speak without breaking down. Pointedly, she glances towards the chair, from which my legs dangle uselessly, held together by Velcro straps.

If my jaw falls any further, it shall unhinge.

_What_? Instinctively, my hands shoot to the chair wheels and I backtrack a little.

Mrs. Crawford's big, electric blue eyes are bright with hope. "Could you talk to my little Nate? Share your experience with him? He's lost _everything_ and I'm sure your story is very similar – oh, my little Nay-Nay!"

My jaw is hanging so low it could fit an entire swarm of flies. If I thought she was _dumb_ before, now I think she's criminally stupid – or heinously, disgustingly self-involved.

"Well, I've never _even _played football, _Julia_," I say. I inject the same contempt into her name than I would into a dirty curse word. My voice is saturated in sarcasm; my big, round eyes are slits; my expression is ice. It's meant to be a subtle reminder that I can't _imagine _stopping a sports career because I've never even kicked a football. There's no point of comparison between a season without sports, and an existence of leg-spasms and catheterization.

"Oh, sweetie, but those are just technicalities!" she says, like a patient mother calming down her upset toddler. "In essence, the experience is the _same._"

I find this so darkly humorous I have the fight the urge to burst out laughing. Nate Crawford and his _witch_ of a mother actually _think _breaking a knee is in the same category as breaking the highest thoracic nerve in the spine. I'm so unbelievably angry, and darkly amused, that tears start to sting my eyes. My hands are shaking so hard I grip the chair wheels to still them. I stare at her incredulously. For the first time in my life, I witness some _legitimate _admiration in her electric blue eyes. She just _hugged _me – she didn't press my head against her augmented breasts.

In a split second, as I drink her absolutely _devastated _expression, I feel bad for Nathaniel and Julia Crawford. They've both led such a sheltered, happy existence that Nate feels a crushed knee signals his life is over. It's somewhat tragic that _this _has been the greatest hardship in Nate's life. I get impatient with the small little tragedies of my peers' lives, but they never provoke a paroxysm of rage. Now, what's making me _sick _with disgust is that they're self-involved and stupid enough to think Nate _knows _what it's like to live with a body unresponsive from the chest down. As I look at Mrs. Crawford, I know there is nothing I can say to make her understand that Nate not playing isn't a tragedy akin to breaking the spine. In fact, it might even deflate his big-ass ego enough for him to see past his aquiline nose.

I don't say any of this. I say nothing.

I'd be fighting 40 years of self-involvement, sheer apathy and self-righteousness. Nothing I can say is going to burst the bubble of a life she has led. Angrily, I muss her hair, pretending to be comforting. Then I give her a saccharine smile. I feel bad for producing such a gesture, but I can't wait for this to be over.

I opt for wordlessness.

Mrs. Crawford blinks and sniffs before I crush her to my chest. For the first time in my life, I intentionally physically harm a human. I hug her so tightly, I know I'll leave bruises.

* * *

With messy, wet hair, I leave the changing room. I feel a weakening sense of relief. The purgatory of this is almost over.

"Ness!"

Holy _fucking_ Jesus, I'm not in the mood for this. Chugging down on my lip, I wait for Buzz Hemlich to reach me. I couldn't even spin in his direction if I tried – there's no space. I'd have to go around the spinning bikes. When Buzz does get to me, panting like a dog after fetching a stick, his entire face lights up like I'm _exactly _what he wanted for Christmas. It's cute enough that my anger melts a little, and my responding smile is bright. I'm reminded of how his face is different from his grandfather's. The contrast is glaring, not because Buzz' skin is taught over his face, because his tall-frame is so well-built or because his eyes are electric blue, not dark brown. It's because Buzz wears the infatuated, silly grin of a boy in love – not the disgust and hate of a man looking at his long lost enemy.

For a second, my insecurities flare away in the light of his adoration. If his grandfather came near me, I'd be able to flip him a bird. I'm overcome with a desire to hug Buzz.

…Until he squats down and presses a big, wet, sloppy kiss to my cheek. He smells of sweat, heavily coated by a dose of Chocolate-scented Axe. If I could cough, I'd be choking at the disgusting smell. It's a very gentle kiss, and he lingers on my cheekbone for longer than is necessary.

I blush, not only out of embarrassment – the people that weren't staring at me are now staring – but because I find myself oddly flattered. Coils in my stomach flare, as a chill rises from the tip of my spine all the way to my neck.

As quickly as I can – in a motion almost imperceptible to human eyes – I wipe down my cheek with my t-shirt sleeve.

"Hey, Buzz," I say. I'm peeking up from underneath my eyelashes, not for the sake of appearing cute, but because I'm _blushing _like a tomato. "I'm sorry I couldn't make it last night."

Buzz reaches out to tuck in a wayward hair out of my ear. I pulled it into a messy, wet knot at the top of my hair. Wet, it looks dark red. I move my head away like a baby rejecting mashed carrots.

"Where were you?" Buzz asks curiously.

I freeze for a second. This means Dear Ole' Grandpa didn't tell him he saw me. It makes sense, if he's disgusted by the prospect of his grandson coming anywhere near me.

"My brothers and I were hanging out," I say, nonchalant. "I hadn't seen them in a week. I lost track of time."

I purposefully refrain from sounding apologetic. I'm not his beck-and-call girl.

My aspiring lover-boy turns stiff at the mention of my brother, and beads of nervous sweat begin to drip down his forehead. Buzz fears Emmett will one day lose it one day, and pummel him to death. Hell, I bet his instincts tell him my father – ganglier and shorter than him – could probably do it, too. I feel bad for the poor boy. As annoyed as I am for his touchy-feely kisses to my cheek and whatnot, I'm even more annoyed by my male relatives' desire to ward them off me. They're just as bad as Buzz is, if not worse. Their threats and punches imply that I _can't _defend myself, which in the long-term, makes me more vulnerable.

"How did the game go?" I ask, hoping to lighten the mood. "I heard Nate got hurt."

I inject a socially-acceptable amount of sadness into my voice. Inside, I'm kind of pettily glad. I wouldn't object to hurting the Crawford family jewels if given the chance.

Buzz looks sideways to his left and right. Then a tiny _beam _of happiness spreads itself across his face, contained below his cheekbones through Buzz's tremendous effort.

"Coach asked me to step up as quarterback," he whispers excitedly. "And we _won_!"

My smile is genuine. "That's awesome!" I say, strangely proud of this boy I think of as a little, lost puppy. The smile is slapped off my face when his beam stretches to the point that he looks like he's had a bad Botox injection. Hope shines brightly in Buzz's blue eyes, and he looks at me like he's besotted.

Christ almighty.

A part of me wants to crush his hopes before he decides to stick his tongue in my mouth. Another is clinging to his infatuation, basking in the safety of his obsession. Buzz Hemlich _wants _me, and the 16-year-old girl in me _needs _that.

"It sucks you weren't there to see it," he continues, genuinely disappointed. Seconds later, Buzz's lips turn down, and they tremble. They don't look unlike Mrs. Crawford's earlier in there. A part of me starts to panic. I've pulled _one _person's shit together today. I can't do it for two.

"You need to tell me all about it later," I say, like I mean it. It's less blatantly rude than to tell him that frankly, my dear, I give zero damns.

My hands fall to the wheels of the chair, and I start pushing, gently nudging his shins with my knees. I roll back and forth a little, like I'm prepared to speed the fuck out of the gym the second he moves. "I really need to get going, though."

Finally, it comes.

"We could go out this weekend," he offers, "And I could tell you about the game."

His "proposal" feels like taking a dump after battling constipation.

I make a sound like I have been punched with weightlifting equipment. Buzz's giving me a look that he probably thinks is smolderingly sexy. He looks like a 7th grader trying to solve a differential calculus problem.

"My fath – my brother, I mean – is waiting," I say, smiling through gritted teeth. "I really need to get going. He's been waiting for 30 minutes."

I send my original plan to hell, pushing the chair backwards. This forces me to look behind me, like I'm trying to park in reverse. The chair's backrest hits a weightlifting bench.

"Ness, wait," he says. He grabs on to my shoulder. I wrench it out of his reach.

"I really need to go."

Buzz lodges his brick-sized foot in below one of the chair wheels. Buzz and I both know that if I roll forward, I'll tip over. His foot is high enough that I can't run over it if I tried. With the chair, it's hard to run over a half-full bag of Doritos as it is.

I grind my teeth so loud it sounds like pliers snapping. I give him a look that is murderous, even baring my teeth. Even then, Buzz looks _smug. _I'm looking at him like a _vampire _looking at its prey – which must be pathetic, because I've never once attempted to look like one. He _smiles _at me, and his eyes twinkle with amusement like I'm a toddler trying to act-grown up. The girl in the chair can't get _angry. _Apparently, stigma about people with disabilities runs deeper than his lizard brain instincts to run away from vamps…except where his desire to fuck is concerned.

A scream of fury nearly flies out of my mouth.

"Buzz, _stop it_," I snarl. Tears of rage – always the freaking tears of rage – pool in my big, doe-like eyes. I wonder how much I'd have to restrain my punch to keep his balls from bruising like crushed peaches.

"That's _not _how you'll get me to go out with you."

Or to play with Little Buzz, which is probably his ultimate goal here.

The smug look vanishes off his face, and his eyes _plead _with me. "Then _how _do I get you to go out with me?" It's more an imploration than a question.

"I don't like going out," I say flatly.

This isn't entirely a lie. Going out in a wheelchair can be just as awkwardly painful as a pap smear delivered by your own grandfather (an experience that made me want to begin experiencing early onset Alzheimer's).

"Come on," he says, cackling like he thinks I'm telling a far-fetched lie.

Hasn't this _idiot_ seen me? In the cafeteria, I have to sit at the head of the table and not on it. It's uncomfortable because the chair won't move fully in. so I have to slump down. The lunch line counter is raised so high the lunch lady has to peek down and ask. While I could hold the tray myself, I _can't _be served from a wheelchair. Buzz should know this, as he's offered to be the one to receive my stale meatloaf and potatoes swimming in yellowed grease.

I raise both my dark eyebrows at him, silently daring him to contradict me. With that, his expression changes. He squats down. Buzz is good at squatting; it doesn't feel like he's treating me like a five-year-old. It feels like he is giving me the courtesy of a face-to-face chat.

"It'll be fun, Ness, I promise," Buzz says softly. With surprising tenderness that bursts inside my stomach like the proverbial butterflies, he cups my cheek. "We'll do _whatever _you want, I promise."

I'm feeling like I can't breathe. It has nothing to do with the paraplegia.

A part of me harbors a lizard brain attraction to the muscled, "meh" handsome Buzz Hemlich. The primate in me recognizes a fellow ape, and wants to mate with it. Another wants to dive off the chair and drag my body as far away as possible. I _can _outrun a chubby, out of shape squirrel. The fully-human paraplegic in me, though, would probably only outrun a snail, dragging her torso, hips and legs with her arms. Another part of me, knowing she is unable to run, wants to raise her arm to punch his balls. Buzz's balls dangle, uselessly like my legs, at my eye-level.

"Look," I say, flustered. "I'll call you, alright? I need to go."

I make the offer because I know Buzz will call me soon – like a nervous six-year-old at his first sleepover calling Mama.

"Now get your foot out of the way," I add, through gritted teeth.

I feel like weeping with relief when Buzz removes it. He has the decency to look slightly shamed, but it's muted by an overwhelming expression of joy. He looks as surprised as if I had slapped him, and he enjoyed the shock of it. His eyes are big and wide with hope.

"I'll see you, OK?" I say it not quite sweetly. I might be grimacing, and my smile feels like pursed lips. "Go back to work out."

"Fine," he concedes with a sigh. "I'll call you, baby girl."

Holy mother of fuck, when is he going to grasp only Emmett can get away with that redneck nickname? To make matters worse, he squats down to invade my personal space. One of his legs falls across the space where my useless ones are bound together by Velcro. His arms crawl up the arms rest, and his neck falls right on top of my nose. It's the first time there's been that much bodily oil near my T-zone.

He presses a gentle kiss to my forehead.

I resist the urge to wipe the sweat he rubbed off on my forehead and gag. I instead pretend to smile. It looks like a grimace. I'm _chortling _uncomfortably. I sound like Nana and Granddaddy at the hospital benefit last year, when a tipsy Dr. Welch started making jokes about her husband's affair with the flamboyantly homosexual pool boy.

"I'll see you," I choke out.

Satisfied, Buzz leaves. He probably thinks I'm flustered because of his debonair charm. He strokes my cheek as a parting gesture.

It's nauseating.

It's flattering.

I should be committed to a madhouse.


	5. The Difficulties of Dialogue

**The Difficulties of Dialogue **

In the car, my spirits deflate like a punctured balloon.

"Do you want to talk about it, Nessie, love?" Daddy asks gently.

The chair and the duffel bag are packed up in the trunk of the Audi. I'm sitting on the passenger seat, head tilted and leaning on the glass. Above us, the sun has defeated the cloud-cover after a momentary 30 minute loss. Daddy used the time to pick me up.

His voice is gentle, but the tone underneath is pulsating rage. One of his hands reaches out towards mine, stroking the delicate knuckles on it. The other hand is tightly clutching the steering wheel. Daddy's furious – at the inaccessible shower – even though he's only gathered bits and pieces of it.

"There's nothing to talk about," I say. Rather, there's plenty to talk about – Big Foot, Mr. Hemlich… - but nothing to do about it.

"That's not true, darling," he says. "I can make you a pool – two times the size of this one. Nana can help me build one, and you can _swim _for as long as you want, love, all day long if it makes you happy."

At school, I picked my classes based on the convenience of the classroom location. The only class I take in the second floor is Chemistry because Daddy said I'd love it. It's a matter of convenience to stay in the confines of the first floor. It takes time to maneuver the chair in a sea of rushing High School students. The elevator location is sometimes far away from the classroom I'm headed to, or coming from. Daddy and Jasper carry me up there every now and then, in the chair, which is mortifying. Even with them present and _glaring like vampires_, people mumble under their breath about the disruption. I didn't take Health because it's around the building and up the field, which I could reach, but not in 10 minutes. The Health classroom is across the field, and underneath the bleachers. I'd never get a tardy, but to _get _to the class would take 1/3 of class time.

What Daddy is suggesting is essentially the same thing – forgoing Health for the sake of convenience.

"It's not the same thing, Renesmee," he snaps, angrily. "It's not an extra luxury and it's not a financial hassle of any kind. To get a pool would be akin to getting a TV. It would even be highly beneficial to do leg exercises in the water."

"I'd stop _going _to the country club because it's inaccessible," I say. It was the same with pity – I got a lot of it from the world, so self-pity would be overkill. There were enough physical barriers to using a chair without me adding the mental barrier of _not _using the damn chair because it's hard.

* * *

Drained, but not exhausted, I head up to my room immediately. It's barely 2 o'clock, but I change into my pajamas, and then I go into the bathroom to self-catheterize. It's been six hours.

Mrs. Crawford _was _on to something. The exhaustion I succumb to isn't of the physical kind. I succumb to an awful "here we go again." I don't miss easy mobility because I've never had it, but I _yearn _for it. It's not daily that the craving assails me like this, in the form of a frustration so deep, it corrodes everything.

I don't want to move.

Rather, I don't want to move into the damn chair.

I don't want to.

Wrap my knees with the Velcro strap

(_They fall like an accordion if left to their own devices_)

3-point-turn

(_It's easy in here where the space is cleared out, but it still needs technique_)

park the chair by locking it's breaks

raise the footrests

(_It's a good thing to use them for foot support, even though they're a hindrance in getting in __and__ out of the chair) _

Hoist my body into the bed

Lift up my legs afterward

For the fully-ambulatory, the degree of precision and pre-planning with which I move is unimaginable. The mechanics for walking are so _short_, so perfunctory, executed easily by even the clumsiest of limbs. It pisses me off.

It makes hatred for Jacob Black brew hotly in my stomach.

The sun streams down the window and falls into the marble tiles. The toilet and the grab bars around it sparkle under its rays. Eventually, I use the grab bars to get off the toilet and into the chair. I brush my now dry hair into a twist that hangs from the top of my head, messily. With the soft glow of the sunlight, my hair looks dark red.

I roll out into the room. Nana made my bed, with its four posters and a pale pink quilt. The bed frame and its posters are white wood, giving it the look of a cherry-tree in spring, and the flooring – of white oak – is the same color. The quilt is pale pink, with lace white pillows at the top of the bed. The glaring imperfection is a green-colored frog with glue-on eyes sitting on the ivory-colored pillows. The bedroom would be any girl's wet dream, if ruined slightly by the fact that there are grabs bars everywhere, even underneath the desk to help me out of the wheelchair and into an office chair.

Sometimes, it's nice to sit _elsewhere. _

For a second, I consider just climbing out of the chair and sprawling into the bed, to curl up and _sleep_.

It takes a Herculean effort not to. I go grab a book. My fingers brush over _I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, _but that'd be a page right out of Daddy's playbook – wallowing in my own misery. Instead, I grab _The Sorcerer's Stone. _The book's simple, kiddy humor might lift my spirits before I go off the deep end. I roll into my walk-in closet and grab one of the quilts kept on a shelf. It goes into my lap with _Harry_.

In the mirror, I see my bare feet dangling, foot-rests lifted. I took the Velcro-strap binding my knees together off to use the catheter and didn't bother to wrap my knees again. My knees have fallen open and my feet are dangling, foot-rests raised. My toes drag on the floor.

Even in the dead of night, I _always_ pull down the foot-rests and try to re-arrange my legs. What I'm doing is morbid, petty – even depressive. It's like I'm purposefully mistreating my own limbs.

Emmett frowns when he sees me leave the elevator, but doesn't comment on it.

Once I manage to open the sliding glass door, I push out into the terrace. It's a raised deck over the lake, decorated with loungers and an L-shaped, padded ledge. Because of the snow and in spite of the sun, the air bites and my cheeks turn pink from exposure. It doesn't take long for my fingertips to go cold. If I were in a better mood, I'd appreciate how _gorgeous _it looks – the budding trees covered in snow, surrounding Lake Erie as the water throws rainbows under the sun. I'm also a spoiled brat. There's nothing _special _about this for me – I've _always _lived in massive, beautiful properties with views construction companies would kill for. Still irritable, I fling both book and quilt carelessly into the floor, dropping them as if letting go of trash.

When I transfer into a padded lounger, I do it wrong. I'm supposed to angle the chair closer to the lounger, plant my feet on the floor and swivel my torso out of the chair.

I do none of these things.

Without even locking the brakes, I lift my body like I'm trying to do a push-up and move one arm to the lounger, feet twisting underneath me –

"Baby, you're going to hurt yourself," Emmett says. There's heavy southern accent coloring his words – he's nervous. He's beside me in the blink of an eye. Gently, he pushes me down on my shoulder and angles the chair closer to the lounger. "Do you want me to help you?"

Emmett is more perceptive than people give him credit for.

I chug down on my lips, still suspended in midair. I grunt instead of nodding.

In response, Emmett lifts me easily into the lounger, and then wraps me up in the blanket.

I'm spoiled enough that I expect this kind of relentless servitude. It's their fault, of course. I was not simply well cared for; I was _adored_. I suspect the chair aggravated the spoiling, but not by much. My every wish and need was catered to by a family that had never experienced a growing child. If I wanted it, it was mine. If I didn't like it, it was replaced with a profuse apology. My tears made the house go into a panic, and my smiles, brightened it up. The house lives under _my _dictatorship, but none seem to mind. Growing up, I was told I was a precious gift. In the self-involvement and idiocy of most eight-year-olds, I took this to mean I was God's gift to humanity. Puberty was the only proverbial ton of bricks that took me down several pegs. Even then, I don't thank Emmett.

Before I have even opened _Harry_, Emmett returns with a pair of thick socks and slippers. I peer up at him from underneath my fat black eyelashes, pretty pink lips pursed.

"May I?" he says. The man knows something's up – he usually never asks before doing shit for me.

"You're going to do it anyway," I say stiffly. It's my snooty version of consent.

Emmett recognizes as much. He grabs both of my feet and slips on the garments. It isn't a matter of me feeling the sting of the cold, but about my nervous systems' response to it Peripheral nerves still work, even if the signals to the spine don't. Emmett knows as well as I do that I was practically begging for a bad case of AD. Any stimulus can trigger it. Exposing my feet to the weather like that is one of such stimuli. It's cold enough for the tip of my nose to go red. Finally, he wraps my feet inside the comforter, like a burrito.

"All better now," he says. He touches the tip of my pert nose with one of his fingers. The tip of his pinky is bigger than the cartilage underneath it.

"I can't tell, can I?"

Emmett stops, backtracking. One of his large hands cups my cheek, which pink and cold under the air's attack. His palm is big enough to stretch from the tip of my delicate chin past my cheekbones.

"What's up, honey bunny?" he asks. His tone is light and at odds with his face.

"It's old news that I can't feel shit down there, Emmett," I say snappishly. "There's nothing "up.""

I tilt my chin to my useless feet. It's a somewhat ironic statement, as I can't feel shit in my rectum, either. I've had to train my body to shit on schedule. There's no such thing as an ass-catheter; I have to take the shit out with my fingers, over the course of one hour. Much to my chagrin, Emmett knows this too well. His wife loves me _so much _she helped me shit like clockwork, when I was a little girl – and would probably do it now, if I wasn't too ashamed to ask. Nobody's ever indicated the slightest hint of disgust or discomfort at the disgusting realities of living with SCI.

Pain is a more common reaction, and Emmett's eyes are wide with it now. He hides it well, though. Emmett's never pitied me, either. "If I felt pain like you feel every day, the neuropathic bastard, I'd cry like a little girl," he told me once.

"I don't believe that for a sec, champ," he says, deceptively light-hearted. "Talk to Uncle Emmy." In addition to calling me _princess _or _gorgeous _or _baby girl_, he's always called me _champ. _

"There's nothing to talk about," I say dryly. From underneath my eyelashes, I peek up at him pointedly.

"That's not true, gal-pal, and we both know it." The Tennessee accent makes me laugh. Tension broken somewhat, I decide to take the stick out of my ass. Emmett is better at heart-to-hearts than people credit him for.

Finally, a sigh forces past my pearly little teeth where they trap my plump lower lip. I put down my book. Emmett doesn't move, waiting for me to continue. Rare patience like this is what makes Emmett a good hunter – although I'd die before admitting that. Jasper, typically more patient in every way, doesn't understand that – and frightens away his prey.

"It's nothing specific," I finally say. My voice isn't breaking, or threatening to. It just sounds _weak, _like I need to curl up for a while and drink hot cider. "I've just had a tough two days."

Telling him the specifics is going to wreck this rare bout of maturity.

"I'm sorry, honey," he says. Emmett is best for these kinds of things, because he and Rose don't like wallowing in self-pity.

As if he can read my mind, Emmett inches closer. I break the space between us and wrap my arms around him. He rubs his hands on my pink, fleece pajamas. Emmett usually gives hugs of the bone-crushing variety, but this one is gentle. In my bear of an uncle's arms, I feel safe and protected. I'm no longer overwhelmed.

He kisses the crown of my head, and I finally break the hug after giving him a squeeze.

"Did you guys find Big Foot?" I finally ask. My tone is nonchalant, which is bizarre as I'm talking about the forest-dwelling Godzilla of the Northeast.

"That's not really what's bothering you, is it, Nessie?"

"Not to go all Edward Cullen woe-is-me on you," I say, "but it's one of many things at the moment."

In all fairness, Daddy does have a great many things to mope about – his daughter is paralyzed and his wife is gone – but apparently he was just as bad during the entirety of the 20th century.

"Seriously, though," I prod, looking at Emmett in the eye. I don't do the eyelash batting mojo because looking cute and vulnerable isn't going to help. Where Big Foot is concerned, I'm sure Emmett has done everything he can. I saw him last night, but I'm sure it was all show so I wouldn't panic. Nobody but Nana is in the house, and he wasn't here this morning. Emmett's been out patrolling, looking for the bear, all night long – and was sent home for a break, mental if not physical.

"Well…" he begins. I'm reminded of the time I asked him to let me watch _Jaws. _

"Well…" I urge him on. "Did you get to wrestle some mutant bears?"

His face falls like a little kid whose new tennis shoes were just ruined by random dog crap on the street. The man even pouts. _Bingo, baby - _Emmett is so _easy _to manipulate sometimes. Like a sock puppet.

"First off, by the time Jazz and I got to you the wind had blown away a whole lot of the stench. The trail grew a little colder by the time we went back to look for it, and then as we followed it, it started to rain. We were gonna give up, but then Jazz and I caught the scent of – "

Emmett stops suddenly, to study my face hard, as if to look for traces of fear in my expression.

He knows I'm no pussy. Emmett even once told Daddy, "Damn, bro, your daughter's got more balls than you do." At the same time, he's heard me scream raw-throated, thrashing in bed (as best as my body will let me), and sweating bullets in the dead of night. Emmett knows it's because, after all this time, I still remember the feeling of Black's teeth _digging _into my sides. I still remember with crystal clear clarity what it felt like to have his paw press down on my thorax, as blood streamed out of my newborn body. I still _remember _feeling one, grimy black claw dig into the finger-sized spinal cord, the tip razing it dead.

"I'm scared of wolves, not bears," I point out. My tone is carefully controlled.

The joke that _I _would make – and Emmett, too, in different circumstances – would involve my phobia of Saint Bernards and well-endowed Labradoodles. Emmett doesn't find it funny. In fact, Emmett looks murderous with rage when Jacob Black is so much as mentioned.

"Jazz and I smelled car exhaust," Emmett finally admits with a sigh. Emmett looks at me expectantly, like he's revealed some incredibly important detail – like mobsters admitting to betrayal in the Godfather trilogy. Emmett really needs to work on his fantasies about becoming Major Tom and 007.

"People out hunting?" I ask, shrugging my shoulders. "A Park ranger?"

Emmett gives me a funny look.

"Yeah, Ness-Ness," he finally says. "Sumthin' like that."

* * *

I begin with _Straight Leg Raises. _Grabbing my left ankle by the pants, I pull it up towards my chest, such that my knee is touching my nose. Keeping the leg raised, I slowly recline using my right arm, which supports my torso. I'd plop down messily if I just pulled my left arm off from under my torso's weight. I stretch out my right arm to hold on to my knee to keep it straight.

I hold for two minutes.

I continue with the _Straight Leg Raises. _Both my hands crawl down to the bottom of my thigh to lower it, a rather difficult task when you can't sit up. When my hands are too low down the thigh, it plops down unceremoniously, like souffle popped by a fork. With both arms, I sit up again. The cycle repeats four times for each leg, with each stretch being 30 second longs.

"You'll tear the muscle, Renesmee," Rose says sharply. "30 seconds _only._"

I _hate _it when people call me Renesmee. For crying out loud, my mother was plugged to an IV and carrying vampire spawn. It can't have been a state conducive to mental clarity. They might as well have gone to the nearest pothead, or the nearest sugar-high five year-old, who would've named me Lady Beyoncé Twinkly Buttercup Baby. Emmett came up with the halfway decent nickname of Nessie. We all call me that to pretend my real name isn't nearly as bad as Consuela Banana-Hammock.

Rosalie and I remain alone in the third floor. A room in it was completely cleared for me to do physical therapy. It would be the envy of the physical therapy center in town, if they knew it existed. It has state of the art equipment – from the plinths, a raised table with a padded mat; to the exercise machinery; to the exercise balls. True to form, my grandmother made the space beautiful. The hardwood floors are mahogany and where the windows should be, she made the walls glass pane. It means that sometimes I come up here even when I'm not in therapy, to watch the sun rise over the lake, melting away the caps of snow on the far-off pine cones and the barren oaks. It's so beautiful that I don't mind sounding like a melodramatic tourist endorsement when I describe it.

Facing the wall, in the far corner is a bicycle-type machine, used for a type of therapy called NES (Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation). Electrodes are stuck to different muscle groups in the legs and the heenie, so that they are electrically-stimulated into cycling. I use the thing for at least a half-hour, every _single _day. The only exceptions have been times like yesterday, when everybody though my brain would bleed to its death, or for short vacations. I haven't stopped using it for more than four days. The Bike even has a substitute in motherfucking _Brazil, _where we spend three-week holidays in the wintertime.

When I was 12, I willingly managed to move my pinky toe on my right foot. Given the way everyone reacted, you'd think I'd invented the cure for cancer, or pushed a child out of my loins. I find it kind of pathetically funny. My central nervous system's one hurrah in life has been the ability to wiggle "the little piggy that cried all the way home". Carlisle suggested that "the miracle" (or, realistically speaking, grandfather dear, pinky wiggling) might be due to the NES therapy.

I personally think Black missed a spot.

Since then, Rose and Daddy have developed a ridiculous fascination with the Bike, a model called RT300. If you ask me, the ability to move a pinky toe doesn't justify spending hundreds of hours electrifying one's muscles like the fence around a military base. Daddy and Rose both think I'm being silly when I say that. Once Rose and I finish doing the exercises I can't manage unassisted, I'll be strapped to the thing for an hour.

I glower at Rose as though she just called me "shitfuck." _You'll tear the muscle, shitfuck._

My godmother is sitting on one of the plinths, Indian style – a surprisingly carefree gesture for a woman that uses her long, beautiful legs to intimidate women and get men's attention – while thumbing through _Vogue_.

"No, I won't," I say cockily, biting back laughter. "They're supposed to be vampy muscles, remember? They don't work because the spine doesn't, not because they don't."

That isn't necessarily wrong, per say, but it was truer before the spine snapped. To move the muscles below the line of injury, electrical stimulation or what I'm doing now has been used. It's called "passive range of motion", exercises performed on the joints to keep them from stiffening, and to ward off spasticity. Rose forces me to do it three times a day, and Daddy agrees. I pretend to be annoyed, but I rather enjoy the stretching, even if I can't feel it. No matter how effective the exercises are, however, they aren't the same as _moving _in vigorous exercise. The muscles are flaccid. Regardless, the muscle tissue is that of a vampire.

"I know that," Rose says, her voice softening, "but we better not to risk it."

I continue with _Ankle Dorsiflexion, _which takes less effort. I sit up, and stretch my arms out so my torso swings forward. Each hand crawls forward, like a five-legged spider, and grabs on to the balls of each feet. Like always, I hold for 30 seconds.

The house is so quiet I can hear the wind rattling windows, and it isn't particularly windy outside. Someone, thinking I was still five, left the TV on, with ESPN playing. The sound of Rosalie flipping pages echoes. There's a basketball game on, but I know Emmett is absent. He usually grunts, mumbles under his breath about the golden era of Michael Jordan, or bitches against the manager. When the game finishes, Emmett usually says, "Well, after _that, _somebody should score," and goes looking for Rosalie.

As if that weren't disturbing, I've seen parts of what happens after Emmett proclaims his desire to score. Emmett might as well be thinking, "Well, Nessie's brain has been on her head too long. Let's burn it off with the most disgusting image ever" – namely, Emmett slapping Rosalie in the ass and then calling her hot mama. (I've seen that happen more than once). Alternatively, he'll making growling and giggling noises while sucking on Rosalie's neck. It's perturbing. Sometimes, I think he does it to exercise my gag reflex.

I'm worried because Rose and I are all alone, and I want to know _why._

Releasing my grip, I stay down, with my nose between my ankles, inhaling. _Somebody, probably Emmett himself – he has the self-awareness of a newborn baby – is trying to pull the wool over my eyes. _

Fifteen seconds later, I grab the balls of my feet again. I hold for 30. Then I repeat the exercise twice. My hands crawl back down my legs, so that they align with my shoulders, pushing my torso halfway upright. Then they jump backwards, until they're aligned with my hips, and I'm sitting upright.

Putting down _Vogue, _Rose uncrosses her legs and raises the plinth to a 90 degree angle. With my back supported, my hands are free to continue stretching my legs. I continue with _Hip Rotations _for each leg. I bend the knee to my chest, place the inside of the foot against the opposite thigh, and press down on the knee. I hold for 30 seconds. The right knee touches the plinth mat easily. Then I bring the knee back up, to repeat the motion four times. When I try for the left knee, I meet resistance, so I push down gently.

Below me, I hear the Hawks lose (as they always do). Emmett is a big fan because of some southern solidarity thing he spews out like a Confederate Soldier. When the Hawks lose, Emmett goes looking for Rosalie to "dunk like 'em Hawks should."

Just thinking about what that means makes me want to blow my brains out. My face contort I'm being force-fed the boiled prunes they give the denture-less patients at the hospital. From the corner of her eye, Rose looks at me curiously, amusement tinged with worry about my sanity.

I'd be worried, too.

This time, I'm worried not because the Hawks have lost and Emmett isn't here grabbing Rosalie's ass like her butt-cheeks are stress balls.

For the past weekend – tomorrow, Monday looms ahead – I've been left alone at home with one adult, presumably so that adult could babysit me. I'm not stupid.

This is a good a time as any to start asking questions. It'll give me something to build on for my planned collective Q&A session with the Brady Bunch. When we're all riding to school tomorrow, I can drop a question or two. Paradoxically, it's easier to interrogate them collectively than to interrogate them alone, because they all _need _to put their input in. If they are lying, they will most likely say conflicting things.

To finish, I do _Hip Internal Rotation_. Keeping my leg bent to my chest, I press down on my knee and push it down against the opposite thigh. Once I'm done with the same routine, I plop my leg unceremoniously on the plinth mat.

Rose grimaces. Nobody likes it when I fling my legs around carelessly, like potato sacks. Rose always touches them very gently.

"Done," I tell Rose chirpily.

Rose looks up and smiles at me. Gracefully, she climbs down from the plinth and begins working on my legs. First, she grabs one foot and places her hand along its arc, lithe fingers on the heel, and pushes the foot backwards. As tall and flexible as I am, paraplegia notwithstanding, I can't do that one alone.

When Rose finishes that one, she turns the arch of foot towards the opposite leg, as if to twist my pinky towards my toe. Then she does the opposite, twisting the toe-side inwards and the pinky side outwards.

"Let's do the quadriceps now," she says softly when she's done. Very gently, she lifts up my foot and presses a kiss to the arch.

With Rose propping one of my hips up, I turn to the side using my arm, and then scoot backwards. Rose pushes that hip down and arranges my legs behind me, before grabbing one ankle – and presumably bringing it to touch my ass.

Thanks to Dumb & Dumber, I have a good poker face. Regardless, I'm a fairly good actress, born both out of a need to downplay physical and emotional pain, and the ability to manipulate four grown men like sock puppets. While Emmett is as easy as a 4th grader's math homework, his wife is no picnic. I can't pretend to cry, call her Aunt Rose and give her the goo-goo eyes. Rose would see right through me like I'm a glass window. It's easiest to lie, though, when I'm not looking at her.

My time has come.

"Where is everybody?" I ask, as casually as I can. Once I've delivered the question, I crane my head in her direction.

"Carlisle and Esme are out on a date, Alice went shopping, and everyone else is out hunting," Rose says, feigning nonchalance. With one perfectly manicured hand, she tosses a coil of golden hair behind her shoulder…

… which roughly translates to: "This is so fucking important we should all be setting evacuation plans and calling the national guard." Rose is a strange creature. The more dismissive she is of something, the more profoundly it affects her. To Rose, flipping one's hair is like flipping one's shit.

"_Why?_" I yell, in a whiny, high-pitched tone. It echoes throughout the empty house. I scrunch up my face in displeasure, twisting my pretty pink lips into a grimace and wrinkling my nose with irritation. Fortunately for me, my complaint is real, and my delivery of it is only slightly exaggerated. "I _needed _to go hunting, Rose. I didn't get to do it yesterday!"

"We couldn't take you hunting," Rose says curtly, her eyes narrowing as they give me the evil eye. The little girl in me is backtracking, her stomach sinking and her lips puckering. Above that, I am genuinely furious. I _needed _to hunt, and it's not like it's ever been a problem to give me whatever I want.

The true challenge to my Oscar-worthy acting skills is about to come now.

"_Why_?" I repeat, this time tinting my whiny scream with an adequate dose of pain. Without overdoing it, I give Rosalie the goo-goo eyes. "Is it because I can't walk?"

It's not hard to falsify the uncertainty and maelstrom of emotions that the phrase "can't walk" stirs in me, and to pore it out with my eyes. For one, I find it corny. The Sisters at Saint Marge's, and the elderly in particular (but not exclusively) always use the phrase "sick legs." The users of the phrase are misinformed, the phrase is cheesy, and the implication is irritating. I'm disabled, not sick. The _truly _stupidest people struggle with the distinction between the two. The fact that I use a wheelchair doesn't mean I'm unhealthy. My legs look withered not because they've atrophied – Rose and Daddy have worked too hard against that – but because the musculature didn't fully develop.

What's more is that the inability to walk feels like a deeply personal situation, even if the chair is laid out for everyone to see. It's _frustrating_, and it's painful. For my entire life I've struggled to fix the nerves, to get out of the chair, and to maximize my independence and quality of life _in it. _I never struggled with _accepting _the chair – my equivalent of learning to crawl and walk was learning to move around in the chair; and potty training was learning to self-catheterize and to manage my bowel. I went through learning acts of independence like any child, if a wheelchair-bound one. That was the family's issue, adapting to the chair and accepting it. For me, the challenge has been to define what it means to _me. _

The problem has been finding the delicate line between keeping it from defining me, and to understand and appreciate how it has shaped me. The hardest struggle of all has been finding the balance within that vortex of emotions. Sometimes I feel so _angry _everyone can _see _that, in the way other people can hide alcoholism, a parental divorce, anorexia… People take the liberty of seeing the chair and speculating on it, belittling me, pitying me or letting it define me.

The teary edge to my voice when the phrase leaves my lips isn't false. I'm cutting myself open. I'm revealing something deeply intimate.

"Don't be silly," Rosalie says _icily. _I can count the number of times Rosalie's voice has iced over like that with the fingers on one hand. Even when she's yelling herself hoarse, or giving me the evil eye, there's always an undertone of maternal adoration to her expression. This time, I know I've hit a nerve. The icier the Ice Queen is, the more darkly her wounds have been salted.

I push back what little self-disgust I feel at triggering such an emotion-fest for something as trivial – and yet pressing – as digging for information.

"Then _why_?"

It isn't a struggle to inject the appropriate amounts of deep hurt and whiny indignation into the statement.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I'm being sheltered from whatever they're doing in the forest because I can't _join in_. A part of me can't help but feel pangs of hurt about that; the tears brimming in my eyes become more genuine the more I dwell on their origin.

"I'm not a child," I snap petulantly, tears stinging my eyes.

Rose starts to look exasperated. "We know, Nessie," she says. Her lips are pursed, a nervous gesture.

From the corner of my eye, I see Rose's eyes flit towards the chair, waiting for me underneath the plinth. It's an infinitesimally small movement of her golden iris.

I take in a deep breath in part because she's _stabbed _me with her words and in part because I want to argue back. My hands fist into balls, sweating. My own family is falling into the traps I despise people for falling into.

I'm disabled, not a child.

To which Rose would reply, I realize before I've even opened my mouth, "_exactly._"

What would I be doing, out in the wild? I can't push myself in rocky terrain. The problem isn't a lack of strength. In fact, moving the chair is more about precision. I have to _manage _my strength rather than use it to wheel myself around. The problem is the chair itself, the caster wheels. Until they invent some fancy mobility aid, I won't be able to move around in anything other than flat flooring. Even carpets are difficult.

Even if I could move the _damn _chair, I wouldn't be able to run, jump, hide, squat.

I'd be sitting out in the Jeep, maybe some well-built tree, star-gazing. Everyone else would be more concerned about my wellbeing than the task at hand.

The goddamned thinking is going to throw me into a twisted, dark web of implications that are going to chase away sleep.

I bite my lip so hard I fear blood is going to start tricking out of it. I should've kept my stupid mouth shut.

"We wouldn't keep from taking you places unless we absolutely couldn't," Rosalie says, her expression hard but her eyes gentling. I realize she's finished the exercises on both legs. Very tenderly, she strokes one of my cheekbones. "You know that."

Very tersely, I nod. My lip is still trapped under my teeth, about to start bleeding.

"Let's do a lumbar stretch," I say, to keep from saying anything else. My voice is bleary as I push past the knot in my throat.

When I've turned belly-side up, Rose clamps my legs together. Keeping a hand on my pelvis, she pushes down on the knees, turning them to the side until they hang from the plinth. While she holds the stretch, I'm supposed to keep my shoulders straight on the padded mat. When the stretches are done, she walks away. Her heels click as she retrieves a bolster roll pillow, a fat, cylinder-shaped pillow to put underneath my spine.

"Why can't you take me?" I ask softly.

Are they waging supernatural battle with the stupid bear? Are they out in hunting parties?

Rose's expression is stone as she snakes her arm under my torso to lift it up. I lean up on my elbows to help her slip the pillow underneath, aligning it beneath my spine. When she drops my torso and is done arranging my legs, I stretch my arms out behind my head. The exercise, called a _Thoracic Spine Stretch_, is meant to be done with a couple of pillows. I'm in such great shape that the muscles need a bit more to be worked.

"It's not safe."

When I bring my arms back up from the stretch, I extend one arm towards Rosalie's wrist and leave it there. A cool thing about my pretty dull power (a reversal of my father's extraordinarily useful one) is that I can freeze images, and zoom in on them. This one is blurry not out of terror – in fact, the emotion magnified the bear's every pore – but because I chanced such an infinitesimally small peripheral glance. As the bear approached me, I looked to the leg dangling it near it. It could've crushed the leg with a paw and I wouldn't have noticed. It gave me a glance at its frame.

The bear was _gangly. _The bones were so thinly protected that my knuckles hit the shoulder blades easily. It cracked under the force of the punch fairly easily, considering my knuckles didn't even bruise and the force of the punch was hindered by poor balance. Underneath the tree, its knees were bent and its back was slouched. Whatever fat there wasn't on the rest of his body, a chunk of it hangs in a remarkable pot belly. It could've been in hibernation, or hungry from looking for food, but my point is that he bear was _weak. _It couldn't hurt me, so the chances of it hurting any of them again are pathetically nonexistent.

As Rose listens to the message, her expression transforms, softening to the point that she looks weak. "We know it can't hurt us, Nessie," she says softly in a tinny voice. Her hand reaches out to cup my cheek. "The point is that it could've hurt _you_, and I couldn't… I would've _died_ if something had happened to you."

* * *

Rose and I finished the therapy standing on the parallel bars, with my legs held up by splints and Rose's hands propping up my butt, hips and torso. Midway through, the Brady Bunch came back, breaking the silence of the house like a loud, pissy stampede of the Lion King cast. Daddy came up as soon as he got home, but didn't offer to help. At that point, Rose and I were on one of the exercise balls, doing another back stretch, nearly done. Ever since my breasts popped out of my chest, and an ass popped out of my rear, Daddy stopped setting me up for the RT300. It was the only thing left to do.

Rose leaves after she's glued the electrodes to the places I can't reach – including my ass. Since there are electrodes on my ass, that means I have to cycle on the bike Scottish style, breezing out the pubes. Rosalie covers them with a thong-shaped pair of panties with Velcro, but still. If that weren't the unfortunate case, I'd leave the Bike downstairs to watch ESPN with Emmett.

To make the biking on the RT300 less dull, I always bring up my cellphone and homework.

The cycling can be done from a wheelchair, with the brakes locked. To pass the time, I put a lap tray on the chair – an ingenious desk thingy Emmett built, which clips onto the armrest and the chair seat underneath its I can't even feel the tingling from the electrode, it's a rather dull hour. Doing homework is less of an intellectual challenge than a mindless chore. Midway through breezing by Calculus homework, though, the hour is made awfully interesting.

Tucked between my leg and chair wheel, my iPhone begins to vibrate. Only Daddy, who is apparently stuck in the Stone Age, ever calls me on it. He's opposed to using WhatsApp. I know Daddy's more prudish than a Catholic monk and a little old lady combined, but it's not like my legs are spread open to reveal my uncovered flower. He doesn't need to call me on the phone. He can just come up and talk.

"It's not me!" Daddy yells, irritably.

Shocked, I begin to fumble for my phone so clumsily that my pen rolls down. It rolls down the tray and down my foot, landing underneath one of the metal rods that prop up the front of the bike.

"_Shit,_" I mumble, but let it go. My phone is still ringing, from a non-Daddy caller. Below me, five different versions of "_Language_!" flit up. Emmett says, "Honey, don't cuss," which is the most hypocritical thing I've heard since my father forbid me to date human teenage boys.

"Jesus Christ," I whine, "it's not a big deal!"

Immediately, my grandfather's ever lovingly patient, and ever ignored, reminder not to take the Lord's name in vain flits up. I push the lap tray forward to pick up my phone, pressing the answer button, even as I yell, "Sorry, granddaddy!"

It's an unknown number.

"Hello?"

I have half a mind to hang up on the salesman announcing I won a 10-day vacation in Orlando when…

"Ness, baby?"

Holy mother of fuck, it's Buzz. How the hell did he get this number? I purposefully added him on Instagram but not WhatsApp to keep him from getting any access to my number. When he asks for it directly, I keep reading it out loud as quickly as I can. It's a brilliant technique, because the boy is too proud to ask me to slow down. Rather, it _was _a brilliant technique. I was just outsmarted by Buzz Hemlich.

Good god.

"Why is that son of a bitch harassing her?" Emmett demands loudly, to nobody in particular. Under other circumstances, I'd be inclined to agree. However, Emmett, the only male in this household that can't _tell _I feel harassed if I don't say so, is leading the goddamned cavalry charge.

"He's not _harassing _me, Emmett," I snarl. It's a whisper from my lips turned away from the phone.

In response, Emmett grunts like an angry bull. Like I said, he's a man of few words, and most of them are curses.

When I press the device back to my ear, I sound sweeter than pie. "Hey, Buzz. What's up?"

"Did you think about what I said?" Buzz asks, sounding like Little Orphan Annie asking Daddy Warbucks to adopt her.

His voice does little to help his case. I feel like I've been slapped. It's not like I'm a fan of beating around the bush, but he could've at _least _ask asked about my weekend. My irritation builds hotly in my blood, along with tinges of excitement and a bad case of the "Aaws." I really wonder why Jasper hasn't committed me to a mental institution. A licensed professional would probably interpret my cocktails of feelings as symptoms of an addiction to crack.

"What _did _he say?" Emmett asks grumpily. At the same time, I hear Rosalie snarl, "No, Edward, I have no idea."

Above them, my throat is drying and my heart is pounding.

"We could go watch a movie on Friday," Buzz offers sweetly, sounding goofily insecure. For once in the year that I've known him, he sounds like he's offering something without expecting me to say yes. The self-doubt is endearing, and I have half a mind to say yes, when…

"Absolutely not, he's _human. _It is absolutely unthinkable, and the boy has the most wretched, filthy thoughts…." I snort at the funny sentiment, coming from Daddy, who fathered a child with a Unicorn.

"Do you honestly think I'm going to let some horny little shithead with only half a goddamned brain take you out to some shitty movie theater where he's going to put his shitty hands on ya?"

"Back in my day, a gentleman asked a lady's father before even considering courting her, and this idiot boy..." I don't even listen to Jasper finish. In a couple of minutes, it'll turn into a lecture about the Battle of Gettysburg under General Lee.

My mind has been made.

"That'll be really fun, I'd love to," I lie with such glee I sound convincing even to myself. Below me, my father and Uncles turn into monkeys.

"Ey! Oy! No! Ey! No!" Like I said, Emmett is a man of many words.

"Absolutely not, I forbid it! I'm your father!"

I turn away from the phone to laugh at Daddy.

Jasper opts for the heavy waves of regret I'm feeling in my stomach. In his defense, though, a lot of those are mine. Between the Big Foot guilt and _this, _I won't be able to shut my eyes tonight.

I need to cut this conversation as short as possible, so that Buzz doesn't get any cute ideas.

And I don't lose my nerve.

"But, hey listen, I need to finish the French homework. I'll see you tomorrow during class." I say quickly. "Bye!"

"Alright, baby," he agrees halfheartedly. He sounds confused. That bodes well in my favor. The more confused he is, the easier it'll be to manipulate him tomorrow. "Lov – "

In my fist, I almost crush my phone in an attempt to keep the words from escaping. With vampire speed, I hang up on Buzz.

Holy fuck.


	6. The Perks of Tearing a Ligament

Typically, we ride the Jeep to school like one big, criminally insane family. It's the only car big enough to fit six people. Clucking my tongue, I'm rolling my chair back and forth, as I wait someone to carry me up. Technically, I don't _have _to ride the passenger seat if I'm not transferring out of the car myself, but I wanted to. Whatever I want, I get – except were dating is concerned, apparently. Daddy's been stonewalling me all morning. Jasper has been assailing me with emotions like regret, disgust and guilt. Subtle and precise, Jasper is usually good at that. In fact, if it weren't for the guilt, I would think the emotions were mine. It is, however, too early to feel anything. As it is, my eyes are still moist and I'm still groggy.

For his part, Emmett is reinventing what it means to be annoying.

"We're going on the _Volvo_," Emmett grunts at me, as though we're riding donkeys all the way to school. His bad mood can be due to either my impending date or the fact that his vehicle has been hijacked. The latter thing is probably a good idea; I wouldn't put it past Emmett to run over Buzz at his earliest convenience.

Eyes fluttering open with tiredness, I turn to Emmett; I don't bother to turn my chair, just my head. My voice is thick with sleep. At this time of day, I only answer closed questions or grunt in response to open ones. "But the chair doesn't fit on the Volvo if the backseats aren't lowered," I say, confused.

The backrest of the chair folds down, and the wheels pop off, such that it's fairly compact, but it isn't going to fit with six backpacks in the trunk. Even with four bags in the back, the chair wheels have to be put in one of the lowered seats in the back.

"Alice and Jasper are going on the Porsche."

Sucking back my annoyance at my own stupidity, I slowly wheel down the garage corridor to where the Volvo is. Most of the cars we own are awfully inaccessible, with the Volvo second only to the Jeep. If I were driving the Audi by myself, I wouldn't be able to stick the chair in the passenger seat because the backrest can't be lowered on the passenger seat. Where the chair can't go, neither can I.

It's why my family's fits of rage about accessibility strike me as bull. The house itself is a model where accessible design is concerned, and I'm thankful for that, but the point of the matter is that not _everything _can be made accessible. Sometimes, it's a matter of pragmatism. A tiny bookstore that has a hard time making ends meet can't make the corridors wider, simply because it needs the space for shelves. The same holds for any kind of tiny business in a cramped mall, or for cobbled streets in historic villages.

Expertly, Emmett lifts me into the passenger seat. Once he closes the door to break down the chair, I strap in my seatbelt. Since the Volvo's packed closest to the garage door, there's ice crusting the windows and lining the door rims.

"Could I borrow your coat?" I ask sleepily, head bumping against the glass. Within seconds, there's a thick, black coat on my lap. It's big enough to envelop me like a blanket. Before slipping my arms through the sleeves, I fold the hood of the coat to use it as padding. Leaning my head on the nylon, I close my eyes.

Until Daddy starts clearing his throat dramatically, halfway to school.

Daddy is just as bad as an ancient man with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and a teenage boy traumatized by bad acne. He's the epitome of the chronically pissy attitude of the former and the dramatics of the latter. In response to my thought, Daddy huffs dramatically, exhaling air like he's trying to cool down the car with it.

"If you want to talk, you can just use your words, Dad," I say groggily as I snuggle into Emmett's tent-sized jacket. "There's no need to throw a tantrum like a geriatric teenager."

Emmett chuckles and Rosalie laughs. When I do or say something funny, her laugh is different, bathed in maternal adoration and gloating fondness. This is a cold, hard laugh, meant to make fun of the fact she constantly bemoans. Daddy is chronically the moody, acne-ridden (as per Carlisle's description) boy he was when turned. Today, that's been compounded to the crankiness of the senile.

"It's not a tantrum, Nessie," Daddy hisses. "This _date _of yours…"

Christ almighty, here we go again.

"…is an absolutely unreasonable, unsafe idea to which I am absolutely opposed." Behind him, Emmett grunts his agreement.

I groan as I burry my head in Emmett's coat. Daddy's tantrum has been more effective at waking me up than a cup of coffee. I don't feel reinvigorated, though. I feel like a college student, pumped up on Red Bull at 6:00 in the morning, trying to finish a paper before the deadline. I press my hand to my temple and begin to massage.

Rosalie scoffs.

"It's not a date, Daddy," I point out tiredly, like I'm explaining something to a child. "We're just going out to watch a movie."

"That's the very definition of a date, my darling," Rosalie says tartly, but her voice is still sunny with glee and maternal pride.

Usually, Daddy drives like the chauffer in Driving Miss Daisy. That's why I scream out like a cantankerous parrot when Daddy _slams _the breaks.

Immediately, he throws his arm out to brace me from the impact of the hit. Emmett's knees bang against the back of my seat. I shoot out forward, padded arms ready to grab onto the dashboard. In a split second, he checks to see I'm unharmed.

"Daddy, what the hell?" I squeal, suddenly awake.

He ignores me completely. Daddy's expression is thunder when he turns it on Rose. In turn, her beautiful face taunts him, a mocking smile spread across her face.

"She is _not _going anywhere with that boy," Daddy says in a low voice, trembling with rage, "And you're going to stop trying to convince her otherwise, Rosalie. It's none of your business."

The tension in the vehicle suddenly rockets to the moon.

Suddenly, Emmett's coat feels stifling. The state of my cuticles becomes a fascinating subject, and I stare at them avidly – at anything but at the expression on Rosalie's face.

"What about when you _leave_ for three months on end, Edward?" Rosalie says frigidly, her expression irreverent. "Is it not my business then?"

The tension spikes again. The sound of my heartbeat is the only one.

_Fuck. _The word isn't crudely voiced. It lingers in my subconscious, like a paperweight, crushing the emotions swirling underneath it. The word dances on my lips as I struggle to keep from making sound like Rose – and Daddy, both – have delivered physical blows.

I push the door open. With another hand, I unbuckle the seatbelt. My mouth opens, the _fuck _lingering unsaid, as I intend to tell them I'm riding with Jasper and Alice.

Then something does leave my body, barreling up my esophagus and out my mouth. When I stop puking, I see bits of a half-digested banana and clumps of Greek yoghurt spread out on the asphalt. The Greek yoghurt is starting to look like cottage cheese. Just the sight of it makes me gag some more, but there isn't any food left to barf.

Greek yoghurt was thus _expelled _out of the short list of food I can stomach. The sour taste of it, and the texture of the banana, lingers in my mouth, etched forever onto my taste-buds. We had a good run, Greek yoghurt and I.

I gag some more, thinking the glass of milk I had might follow the solids, but it never does.

Next thing I know, a pair of stiletto-heeled Mary Janes join the barf on the ground, tethering on its edge. Gingerly, Rose pushes the hair from my face, caressing it. Daddy's hands are around my waist, keeping me from hitting the ground head first when I lose my balance. Rosalie lifts me up and sits on the edge of the seat.

"Sweetheart, are you alright?" she asks gently, her face and voice contorted with guilt. Earlier this morning, Rose decided to style my hair into a half-ponytail. I bet she regrets that now. Bits of acerbic banana and globs of cottage cheese are resting on the coils that naturally form at the bottom of my hair. With her fingers, Rose picks it off and tosses it out. With the other hand, she strokes my face. "Do you want to go home, love?"

With anger and mortification, my cheeks heat up. Rose's hand, cupping my cheek, does little to cool it off, physically or emotionally.

A bit aggressively, I slap it off my face.

"Let's just go," I snap. My voice is hoarse in the aftermath of barfing. Big, doe-like eyes, the color of a green bottle, have turned glassy with tears.

"Nessie, I don't think that's the best idea," Daddy says gently, pulling a strand of hair behind my ear. From the corner of my eye, I see the glance he exchanges with Rosalie. Their expressions are both _ice_, but their guilt has pushed their rift into a stalemate. "Maybe you should go home and rest, angel."

"This wasn't a stomach bug," I say sharply. "Let's just _go._"

Once Rose caresses my face once more – although it seems like a covert check-up -, she shuts the door. Instead of going straight to her seat, she fishes for something in the back of the trunk. I look back to make sure it's not the chair. Heels clicking in staccato, Rose climbs into the back of the car. Daddy drives on, splotch of vomit forgotten in the asphalt. I barely glance in Rosalie's direction as she hands me a bottle of water. Daddy blatantly spends the rest of the ride searching my face.

I hide anything that there is to find, looking stonily out the window as I take sips of water. At school, the handicapped parking spot is, luckily, empty. One would think that would always be the case, as I'm the only handicapped, wheelchair-confined student, but it isn't.

As soon as Daddy parks, Emmett's door opens.

"Wait," I ask. No longer hoarse, my voice is soft but drained. Behind me, I hear Emmett's door click shut. Slowly, I crane my neck towards Emmett, alternating between looking at him and his brother straight in the eye.

"I think you both owe me the courtesy of letting me _grow up_. This really wasn't a big deal, not until you both blew it out of proportion. So you're both going to put on your big-boy pants, and calm down as I go out and watch a movie with Buzz Hemlich."

Much to my surprise, Daddy and Emmett don't say anything.

* * *

Daddy's little driving stunt, and my ensuing projectile vomiting, meant we made it to school with about twenty minutes to spare. For me, arriving with twenty minutes to spare is what arriving with five minutes to spare is for the fully ambulatory. Nearly ten of those minutes were lost to climbing into the chair and over the snow blizzard outside, and the rest of them were lost to moving the chair through a sea of irritable High School students. People bump against the chair and don't apologize. Backpacks bang me on the head. Boys, especially, grumble in irritation when the chair is in the way. The "big, doe-like eyes" and "delicate little face" mojo only work when people are looking in their direction. At the ass-crack of dawn (and most of the time), people don't look down below eye-level. For every two feet I roll forward, I'm shoved back a couple of inches by some wayward idiot whose knee rolls the chair backwards. There also isn't room for fancy tricks. It's just a forward, one-direction trudging.

I should've waited for the stupid Brady Bunch.

By the time I reach my locker, the hallways are emptying out. Moodily, I take out my Bible for Religious Ed. Last year, the idea of the Adams (Cullen) Family having bibles was so funny I always smiled at the thought. This year, thanks to good Sister Prudence, the Bible feels like she's personally lodged it up my unholy places.

Stuffing the bag between my legs and the chair wheels, I close the locker. I don't dwell on the fact that my hair is sticky with vomit, even if Rose fished the cottage-cheesy globs out of my hair, or on the fact that strands of hair are sticking all over the place like the green top of a pineapple.

Then something does make me take heed and slow down.

From an entire column of lockers away, I hear him sniffing like a little girl. The hallway is empty, allowing me to spin the chair around in his direction. In the staircase that crawls up behind a U-Turn, Nate Crawford is slouching, curled around his own body with his face buried in his hands. One of his legs is stretched out, held in that position by a leg-long brace. The other is bent over one step. His typically tousled honeyed hair looks as messy as a dust bunny, sticking out in the back like Daddy's does regardless of how much gel one sticks in it.

_Good god, man, have some dignity. _

Given my own state, I feel a bit like Emmett should have last night, telling me not to "cuss" – like a pitch-black pot. There _is _vomit fluid crusting my hair, my breath is probably fetid, and strands of my hair are falling all over my face like it's been badly mussed. However, I would rather purposefully shove a cactus up my vagina than wallow thusly in the middle of a corridor, amid ill-willed High School students.

That is exactly what Crawford is doing.

Flippantly, I clear my throat.

Nathaniel – if my mother picked the most ridiculous name since Rumpelstinskin, his mother Julia certainly picked the most pretentious - looks up. Around his blue-colored iris, the whites of his eyes are bloodshot. There are bags around his eyes, made wrinkly by the salt of his tears. The boy didn't even bother to shave his stubble. Is he _stupid_? Does he not know he's surrounded by a sea of merciless vultures? Buzz, his best friend, was _delighted _Nate tore his ligament. Cassidy's eyes zoom into physical flaws, detecting them from miles away. Does it not take one to know one?

"We have class, Crawford," I say. Somewhere between the pull of harshness and of societal norms that dictate crybabies be treated sweetly, my tone of voice comes out like one of Jasper's gentle admonishments. Regardless, my nose is slightly wrinkled and one of my eyebrows is arched. Before spinning the chair around, I add, "You should probably spray water on your face, or something."

Even cocooned by the heat of the building, that sounds like a god-awful idea. To amend for my insensitivity, I roll closer towards him. I stop when the footrests bump against the first step. I open my bag and take out my water bottle.

In my hand, the bottle dangles suspended in mid-air.

Crawford is looking at me like a baby looks at a stranger, rosebud lips parted. I want to smack him again. He looks like an idiot.

"Don't worry," I say, as he takes it slowly. It's like the freakin' Pilgrims making contact with the Native Americans. Good god. I dangle the bottle for him to take faster. "I haven't opened it yet."

Once he has taken it, our eyes meet. I give him a parting grimace.

Very quickly, I back away, and then spin the chair in the direction of the Religious Ed classroom. Because I joined the class (as all students must), the class isn't held in the sacristy or the pews in the chapel. Neither of the two is particularly accessible. Unlike in other situations, I'm sure my classmates thank me. It's hard enough to stay awake for Sister Prudence's lulling lectures without incense blowing up your nose.

Instead of the usual lull of deep breathing and mild snoring, muted conversations are coming out of the English-turned Religious Ed classroom. I _smell _Sister Prudence's absence before I realize it's a physical reality. In her stead, Sister Josephine is at the front of the classroom. I'm actually rather fond of the good Sister Jo, a burly woman with a wide frame to rival Emmett, Jasper's height and a pair of ruddy cheeks. Under her habit are a bunch of frizzy pepper-and-white curls. She finds Alice annoying, which makes me love her all the more.

"Miss Cullen, how nice of you to join us," Sister Josephine says slyly, as soon as I do the pull-and-spin to open the doorway.

"What a bitch," Charlie O'Connell mumbles to the person besides him. "It's not like she can get here any faster."

What I like about Sister Jo is that she isn't _dumb_ about how to treat the matter of my punctuality. She knows that, like everyone else, I can get there on time if I time manage properly, and knows better than to give me a tardy when my tardiness is outside my control. I give her a sheepish, toothy grin in response. I make way to my desk. I share it with Alice, but she is probably restraining my father from tearing Rosalie's head right now;

As I roll into it, I slam my knee against the leg of the table. I know spasms are coming. They always come after the relentless stimuli of being banged on by backpacks and bony knees assail my legs. In my rush to hide the leg spasms under the table, I spin the chair with such imprecision, I hit one knee again. Underneath me, my legs start to spasm, flailing like dead fish flapping, for seconds that drag by.

I look up to see Jo handing me a worksheet. It's a questionnaire on the Book of Job.

"Sister Prudence has the flu, and won't be able to join us for another two weeks."

"Oh, thank the lord," I say.

I say this loudly, like the filter-less, stupid, unstoppable moron that I am.

Around me, cheers and laughs erupt. Immediately, I bury my face in my hands. Blood boils hotly in my entire face, from the tip of my chin to the skin around my temples. Some people start clapping. Amusement twinkles in Jo's eyes before she looks properly affronted.

"We'll talk about the consequences to your disrespect after class, Miss Cullen," Jo says thunderously, but that is just the deep, notable cadre of her voice. I think Banner doesn't like Jo precisely because of it. He wishes his voice had that quality to it.

I nod, chugging down on my lips. The embarrassment is still hot in my face when Nate Crawford barrels in, slamming the door open. A chorus of quiet murmurs erupts behind me when my awful little classmates spot the brace around his knee. Nate looks, much to my relief, slightly better than he did when I saw him wallowing in his misery this morning. At least he's washed the tear-tracks off his face and flattened his tousled hair.

"Crawford, you're late," Jo says, her tone cooling. "Go sit with Cullen. The two of you work on that questionnaire in pairs."

Theatrically, because of course he's Nathaniel Crawford-Kennedy and must always be the center of attention for pity and admiration alike, Crawford hobbles over to my desk. I wouldn't know, but it seems to me he's overdoing it. Regardless, I spin forward as much as the damn chair will let me, to let him pass.

It isn't enough.

The space between my wheelchair and the table behind us is too narrow. The seconds he spends trying to get past my chair are easily the most awkward ten seconds of my entire day. One of his legs ends up lodged in one of the chair's wheels, and the desk behind us scrapes as he stumbles through it. I can feel the entirety of the classroom overtly gazing in our direction. Above me, I can _smell _the blood coursing hotly in the thin membrane of Crawford's skin. The heat of his embarrassment makes my own flare.

While he sits down, I pretend to fish in my Bible for the Book of Job. In my mouth, I'm gnawing on the lid of a black pen. Rosalie stopped buying lidded pens because she _hates _that I gnaw on everything – my lips, my hair, my pens and even my knuckles, if I'm nervous enough. Eventually, sighing like he's fighting back tears, Nate turns around to look for his own school supplies. He groans dramatically.

"Everything's fucked up," he mumbles desperately, his voice cracking at the end of his statement. From the corner of my eye, I see him rest his head on his elbows, massaging his temple with his hand.

Personally, I think the boy would benefit from a good slap in the face. What a fucking baby.

"Cullen?" Nate eventually asks, while I'm flipping through the Bible. I could answer the questionnaire in my sleep – I read the Bible when I was physically three years old, with Granddaddy. "Could I borrow a pen?"

"Sure."

Swallowing, I open my pencil case to see at the assortment of writing utensils in it that make both Alice and Rosalie cringe. All of them, even the Montblanc fountain pen, have tiny teeth marks all over them. The lids on the pens are discolored with the chewing. Blushing delicately, I hand him the one I'm holding in my hand. Jasper lent it to me last week and I haven't gnawed my way through it like a teething toddler.

I take out another one to use myself. It looks like an old dog's chew toy.

"We can share my Bible, too, if you'd like," I offer slyly, edging it towards the center of the desk. Because I was taught it's polite, I keep more than half of it on his side. The self-centered, rude little brat didn't refuse my generosity, like I was taught would be the polite response.

I answered the questionnaire, glancing periodically at the columns of tiny print as if pretending to scan them. My eyes could scan words at 60 words per second – which meant that I could get through the entire Bible in less than half a day. Besides, I had always found the Book of Job fascinating. The questions it posed was a question at the center of my very existence – namely, why does shit happen to non-shitty people? The question posed was enthralling, if the answer Even after years of reading different versions of scripture, my favorite verse in the entire Bible – 42:1-6, Job's Reply to the Lord. I find the entire thing is negated by the prologue, where God was conversing with Satan. In light of that conversation, all of the curses God cast upon Job seem like an attempt to prove a point to Satan. I do idiotic things all the time to prove points to Emmett; I know the psychological symptoms of such a situation. Regardless, though, it's beautifully written, and even then, as I finish reading it, the goose-bumps on my arm have nothing to do with the cold.

"I know that you can do all things;  
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.  
You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge'  
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,  
things too wonderful for me to know.  
"You said, 'Listen now, and I will speak;  
I will question you,  
and you shall answer me'  
My ears had heard of you  
but now my eyes have seen you.  
Therefore I despise myself  
and repent in dust and ashes."

I _feel _his gaze on me before I see him peripherally from the corner of my eye. A delicate blush spreads into the hollow of my cheeks. I remove my index fingers from where it was tracing the words as I whispered the words printed on ink and frail paper. The intensity of his gaze makes me fucking nervous, and I start gnawing on my pen again.

How fucking attractive of me, really, to gnaw on a pencil. A drop of saliva even dribbles down the curve of my lower lip, which dries up like the Sahara because I treat it like a chew toy. Imagining Alice squawking like a parrot, I wipe the saliva off with the cuff of my white uniform shirt.

"That's nice," Crawford says.

"Lord Tennyson said The Book of Job was the most magnificent piece of poetry in ancient and modern times. But yeah, "nice" works, too," I say in deadpan.

My smile is wry, but not mocking.

Crawford tilts his head to the side, studying me curiously.

"It's one of my favorite poems," I tell him quietly. Embarrassment unfurls its way up my cheeks, heating up the entirety of my face. I don't know why I'm sharing that strangely personal piece of information with him.

After that, I'm able to work without further prodding. In my small, fat cursive, I write my answers. I pace myself as I answer the first part. Every now and then, I glance periodically in Lara Treyer's direction. As she's one of my classmates with a working brain, it seems like a good idea to emulate her pacing. The hour ticks by slowly.

Crawford keeps on glancing at me awkwardly, as though he doesn't quite know what to make of me.

Every now and then, his mouth pops open. Crawford then exhales out a puff of cool minty air that has strummed his vocal cords, but isn't shaped into words by his tongue. The interesting thing is that, until now, Crawford has always completely disregarded me. The one time I tried to start polite conversation he was criminally rude. His tone is none all too different from the tone he used when he walked away from me, leaving me feeling stupid and hurt at Cassidy's sweet sixteen. _I have to go somewhere, _he'd said. That somewhere had been the bar for a virgin mojito, leaving me behind to feel stupid and irritated. Towards the end of my own worksheet – Crawford has barely answered the first question on his – Crawford says something.

"You know what this feels like," he growls, voice rough. Crawford's voice cracks at the end.

I inhale sharply. Mind-numbing idiocy and self-centeredness _were _to be expected of Julia Crawford's offspring. The moment we just shared could be considered poignant, and yet Crawford destroyed it by showing less sensitivity and empathy than most five-year-olds. Massaging each temple with four fingers, I shut my eyes.

"Explain that, to me, please," I say tersely, working hard to remind myself that he _is _the offspring of Julia Crawford, in turn fathered by a neo-Nazi and mothered by Betty Crocker.

Crawford's inches his chair closer towards me. The wheels on my own chair cut him short.

I purse my lips.

It dawns on me that he isn't as stupid as I thought he was; the poignancy of our Movie Moment wasn't lost on him. Perhaps the literary significance of Job's Reply didn't escape through the holes of stupidity perforating his brain like Swiss Cheese.

"I've lost _everything_," Crawford says, his voice saturated with anguish.

However, the boy _is_ comparing a lifetime in a wheelchair to a couple of torn ligaments. My legs have to be kept clamped together by a Velcro strap, for crying out loud. I don't even resist the urge to roll my eyes. My fingers on my temples fall from them, tugging at the skin as if to rip it off. I sigh exasperatedly.

When I turn around to look at Crawford, he's slack-jawed. Anger is brimming hotly in his blue eyes.

"You're not taking me seriously," he spits at me, in an accusatory tone.

"Because you sound like a sixth grader asking Mom to buy him a cellphone because _everyone _has one," I snap. The girl I'd been at Cassidy's sweet sixteen is gone, rearing her pathetic head every now and then to swoon when Buzz cups her cheek. "What exactly do you mean you lost _everything_?"

"I can't play football anymore, not this season," he tells me intensely, his voice saturated in angst. Tears gather at the brink, but he sucks them back with manly bravado. "I have nothing to put on my college application – "

Before he finishes his sentence, I slap four fingers against his lips. They feel, 15-year-old me notes, surprisingly silky, soft and warm under the pads of my fingers. "Do you _enjoy _playing football or are you just playing for a résumé filler?"

Under the pads of my fingers, his mouth opens in protest, but nothing comes out. I remove my hand from where it assaulted his face, focusing on the way his eyes flit back and forth as he ponders on my question. The more he formulates his answer, the clearer the unspoken answer becomes.

Swimming for me is like conjuring the thrill I felt as a little girl, opening the battalion of Christmas presents left under the tree just for me. The simple joy of it just bursts through my every pore, mixed with a sense of focus and "zen" that would make a Tibetan monk jealous. When Crawford plays football, he looks like a well-prepared albeit talentless student forcing himself to get through a Calculus exam. It probably explains why he's so mediocre at it. It feels cruel to point that out, so I keep my mouth shut.

The shrill ring of the bell interrupts our brief tête-à-tête. It sends Crawford into a panic, and the words tumble out of his mouth in a desperate rush.

"It doesn't matter anymore," he mutters darkly. "Yale won't take me, anyway."

I mull over the tone of his voice. It sounds defeated, but there's a stronger undercurrent of hesitance in it. Annoyed, I shrug my shoulders and give him a grunt. He's answered his own question.

I shove my chewing utensils and my Bible into my purse-pack, and then arch my arms backwards to hang it from the back of the chair. My torso won't twist for me.

Crawford's unwavering gaze never leaves my hands, blue eyes following my every movement. I realize he expects an answer.

"Listen, Crawford," I finally say. By the tone of my voice, I half-expect myself to reach out and grasp him by the collar. "Look at this as an opportunity in disguise. You just admitted to not enjoying football. So stop moping, put on your big boy pants and go find something you enjoy. Give Yale, or Princeton or wherever it is, a better reason to take you than the fact that you're a legacy kid and you're paying full-tuition."

Impatiently, I shove his chair backwards, pressing the heels of my hands on his seat to indicate he should scoot. I won't have enough leg room to spin my wheelchair out of the desk with him breathing down my neck. Slack-jawed and wide-eyed, Nate automatically agrees, rising to his full height. Luckily, that gives me enough legroom to spin the chair around in a 3-point turn and dart out of the room. The entire first row has vacated, and Jo is gathering her stuff at the front of the room.

"And try not to mope around too much," I add, gentling, "especially around all these vultures."

It takes every ounce of self-control in my body not to add that it's tragically pathetic.

* * *

"Do you want to share what you did with Aunt Rose?" Daddy demands petulantly. He looks like he's been sulking all morning.

Today, I chose to sit with them after many apologies to Simon, whose glare I can feel burning on my back. During break, he accepted my heartfelt apology about ditching him with so much stiffness he might not have accepted it all.

On the other side of the spectrum, Buzz Hemlich is waving at me like a star-struck 1950s schoolgirl. The fact that I'm sitting next to Emmett is probably what's helping him keep his distance.

My chair is parked at the head of the table and I'm eating something Rose probably snuck out of class to pack-up back at the house. It's all stomach-friendly food: peeled up apple cut into chunks, sprinkled with lemon to keep it from turning brown; slices of a raisin wheat bread Nana bought at a French bakery in Manhattan over the weekend; and potato salad with paprika.

I wonder why Daddy's referring to her as anything but her name; they looked like they were ready to rip each other's throats out. Swallowing a small bite of peeled apple cubes, I give Rose a toothy, sheepish grin.

"What did you _do_?"

I take a dainty little bite of the apple I'm holding with two fingers. "Sister Josephine told me that Sister Prudence had the flu and wouldn't be able to join us for the next two weeks, and then – by accident - I said, 'Oh, thank the lord.'"

Everybody laughs Even Rose cracks a small smile, eyes twinkling with amusement, raising her fingers to run them down my cheek with gloating adoration. The only person that doesn't laugh is Daddy. According to Dumb & Dumber, though, Daddy's always had a difficult sense of humor (or the lack thereof).

Done with the food, I decide to leave.

Before I push the chair out of the nook in the table, though, I chance a series of worried glances at Simon. He's sulking like a petulant toddler through bites of food, chancing glances at me through his mop of long, honeyed brown hair.

"Is he _really _mad at me?" I ask of Daddy with a worried wince, instinctively biting my lip.

Daddy huffs as if he's been asked an offensive question – like 80-year-old women that don't want to talk about their age. The stray thought doesn't help my case, and he glowers at me. If there was blood in his face, he'd be purple. Wearing that expression, Daddy shrugs his shoulders. I presume the gesture is meant to look casual, and looks tortured only because Daddy is facially emulating a constipated infant.

In thanks, I flash my dimples and tiny teeth at him. Typically, I don't thank him for giving me what I want – why would I? – but Daddy softens in response. When I finally maneuver the chair of the table, Daddy looks like he's passing gas. At least he isn't wearing the expression that tells me he's battling his personal brand of high blood pressure. Satiated, I blow everyone a kiss.

Like a pedestrian crossing the street, I wait for the caf to clear before zipping diagonally in my best friend's direction. Hope flashes in Simon's face before his face turns affronted. Instead of sticking the chair inside the table, I spin it so one of the wheels is touching the bench where he's sitting down.

The boy in front of him, his best friend when I'm not there, Alex, goes into shock every time I come near them. I used to find it cute that he took a minute to answer a direct question. Now, I just find it annoying.

Around Alex, the table of geeks Simon hangs out with is staring at me in awe. Bits of tomato sauce are dribbling down one of their mouths. The only girl in the mix, one with horse-like facial features, frizzy black hair and beady blue eyes concealed by ugly, black-rimmed round glasses, glares at me. The little freak hates me vocally and spends her free time trying to convince Simon that I'm the antichrist. I smile at her like I pity her.

She shows me her beaver teeth like she thinks its intimidating.

I ignore the whole freak show, turning only to my best friend.

"Hey," I say softly.

Simon pointedly turns his head towards Albert, whom I nicknamed Piggy. Last time I tried to speak to the unfortunate boy in an act of kindness, the rolls of fat around Piggy's face became damp with perspiration, and his oversized school Oxford clung to his body. I'd asked him for a pencil. Instead of giving me one, he told me that the weather was nice. I stopped trying since.

With my index finger, I stroke the raised bone on Simon's wrist. In bursts that last less than a millisecond each, I flash images of myself in the hospital; pulling up my legs into the MRI machine, and Carlisle flashing a light into my eyes, the sight of his fingers prodding my bruises. It always works as a tool to manipulate humans; their conscious brains don't process the image but their subconscious does. Coca-Cola tried it in an advertising campaign eighty years ago, and the ensuing desire to have a coke caused a stampede.

"I'm so sorry," I say quietly, voice genuine with emotion. "I really tried to make it."

I continue stroking the raised bone of his wrist, noticing happily that he isn't snatching his hand out of my reach. He tilts his chin-up, like Rosalie does when she looks at humans with disgust, but then lets out a defeated breath.

"You owe me," he says angrily, "and big time."

I beam. "I do," I agree heartily. "And I'll make it up to you."

Grabbing onto one arm rest to not lose my balance, I scoot my ass closer to the edge of the wheel where it meets the table bench. Then I crane my neck towards him. It isn't spontaneous – nothing I ever do involving my whole body is – but Simon still looks a bit dazed once I press a tiny little kiss to his cheek. At that point, it's upturned into a smile and my lips land on Simon's left dimple.

"I'll see you in History," I say, chirpy with my own success. It takes a couple of turns to maneuver the chair out of its position; the wheel gets lodged on the table bench, but I spin backwards and manage to unhinge it.

"Where are you going?" Simon asks as I do all of this.

"To, erm, my locker," I say, a hint of sheepishness in my voice.

At this point, Simon probably knows I don't pee like a normal person would. Every lunch period, I sacrifice twenty minutes – nearly half the lunch period – to peeing. On Friday, my after-school incursion into the bathroom was a bit of an emergency, as I'd gone eight hours without peeing. The only thing in my knapsack right now is one of the urine-bag catheters, with the bag portion of it smelling heavily of bleach.

Sometimes, my own body makes me want to puke more than the greasy spaghetti and meatballs Piggy is stuffing into his face.

* * *

The hallways are empty as I roll out of the girl's bathroom, catheter and urine bag packed up in my knapsack.

My locker isn't.

Buzz Heimlich is sitting in front of it, knees bent to his chest and sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In that instant, my eyes locked onto the ridges of his forearms, the combination of protruding muscles and adorning veins. I see them in excruciating detail from the length of the hallway; I see his blonde hairs glistening under the fluorescents and the shadows on his cheek made by the aquiline bridge of his nose.

Seconds later, I hear the tinny _Flappy Birds _song.

Well, that was anti-climactic.

Mentally, I slap myself for describing somebody's body like Danielle Steele watching soft-core porn.

The closer I get to him, the more nervous I become. It no longer has to do with the fact that, when he isn't acting like a renegade Backstreet Boy, his touch makes my heart flutter. It has to do with the fact that there's marinara on the collar of his shirt, we've never discussed anything other than Football playoffs, and I willingly agreed to go watch a movie with him. I want to gnaw on something, but my hands are otherwise occupied pushing me forward.

"Hi," I say, locking the chair brakes. There's a forced smile on my face. I hope it doesn't look like a grimace. What I want to say is, "Move, Hemlich," but the boy doesn't know I was coerced into Friday night by an unsuspecting Emmett Cullen.

Buzz looks up from _Flappy Bird _and his face lights up. In that light of that, my smile turns genuine. My inner Daniel Steele is resurrected by my inner 15-year-old girl, delighted in the way he reverently whispers my name. The slanted pair of blue eyes I find off-putting is starting to look attractive.

"I need to get my books," I say, for lack of something better to say.

Buzz scoots aside. Although he's no longer looking at the game, Faby the flappy bird is still at risk of crashing against green pipes. The tinny music grates on my nerves. I roll forward until the tap of the footrest stops me. Using just my shoulder muscles, I lean forward to open the combination lock.

Apparently I'm the only one that feels the surge in awkwardness, because Buzz rises and immediately starts playing with my hair. Rose fixed it between classes this morning, and the top looks immaculate, but a couple of the coils that form at the bottom are crusted together with dried up vomit. Buzz doesn't seem to mind, running his fingers through the silky tresses from the emerald-colored ribbon to the coils cascading past the strap of my bra.

It's going to be an _awful, awful _date, I think with dread, gnawing on my lower lip. Even Buzz is going to notice the long stretches of unbreakable awkward silence as we realize we have nothing in common.

To make matter worse, there is the bone-crushingly mortifying aspect of logistics. Dread has been slowly creeping into my subconscious and nagging at it. It's very easy for Buzz to romanticize having a wheelchair-bound girlfriend when all he's ever done is push her down the hallway. What is he going to think when he has to pull me up over unfortunately placed curbs? When we have to go around the mall for the elevator? When he has to stay at the bottom row in the cinema near the handicapped spot, or carry me up to a better one?

Slowly stuff my French workbook into my purse, along with a catheter and a barely rinsed urine bag. The latter two inside a zip-lock bag, but the stench permeates out of the plastic pores and into my vampire nose, even though I rinsed them twice with water. If I keep them in the locker now, the stench builds and clings on to my notebooks. It reminds me of the kind of disgust and regret Buzz is going to be feeling as of Saturday morning.

Buzz's fingers in my hair are making me uncomfortable. A good dosage of old-fashioned fear of murderously jealous vampires might get him to drop the hair as if I had informed him that I puked on it this morning.

"My brothers are going to be a little difficult," I say. It sounds like a nervous chortle.

Buzz chuckles. "That'd be such a change," he says.

My irritation keeps building as Buzz pushes me down the hallway, which on the upside allows me to gnaw on my hands. By the time we reach the French classroom and Buzz slams one of my knees against the threshold, human knuckles would be bloodied by my teeth's attack. Clumsily, Buzz turns the chair around – having to push it back and forth three times –before getting it through the threshold. The entire minute, instead of gnawing on them, I clench my knuckles.

Apparently, the lord's flu also knocked out Sister Adrienne, the French teacher. There's a substitute teacher at the front, wearing the brain-dead expression of those that have given up hope. In front of her, there is a barrage of sleepy, well-fed and sugar-high teenagers. Directly in front of Buzz and I is a television, indicating we're about to watch Dora the Explorer's French counterpart for the next 50 minutes.

"I can get it from here," I say, biting my urge to snap. It takes a great degree of precision to maneuver the chair into one of the tiny little desks. Clueless as ever, Buzz takes the desk to my left, even though Rosalie usually sits there.

When Rosalie gets there, a minute before the bell announces she should be in her seat, the sour expression on her face is replaced by an enthusiastic beam. Giggling like a training bra owner, my 90-year-old Aunt waves frantically at Buzz. Befuddled, he waves back at her. He gives her a nervous smile, like we give Bob, the crazy hippie that dwells by the interstate. _It's better to smile at you than to risk your lunatic breakdown_, Buzz's confused smile says.

I slap my hand against my forehead.

Daddy wanted me to be accompanied at all times by a family member. My family member waves at Buzz all the way to her seat, like an over-enthused hockey mom waving at her winning son during a tournament.

I bet he regrets that now.

Rosalie takes her seat in a faraway desk. Oblivious to basic social cues, she turns her attention to us as though we're a scene from the _Days of Our Lives. _She gives me encouraging smiles, waving at Buzz again like a gloating soccer Mom.

"Sweetheart, this is so exciting," she gushes in a low voice. At that point, I shape my hand into a gun and press it against my temple.

People wonder why she and Emmett are together.

I think it's because they're both criminally obtuse to the discomfort of other people.

"Alright, children," the substitute drowns in a nasal voice. I fight the urge to giggle. "We'll begin by calling row, and then we'll watch _Les Choristes. _Atlee, Brittany?"

Next to Rosalie, blonde Brittany raises her hand. Beauregard, Timothy, follows.

"Cullen, Isabella?"

I raise my hand. Nobody pays me any mind as the rest of the class follows. The school already overcame the drama of my aversion to my legal name.

"You OK, babe?" Buzz asks, bringing me back down to reality. The substitute has dimmed the light, and has just concluded a short battle against the obsolete DVD player. Apparently she won; French, far too complex for our class, has now joined the soft murmurs of chatter. Most of them can barely say, "Bone-yor. Yay maple John."

I release my bottom lip from where I'd trapped it under my teeth, gnawing on it.

"Yeah," I say distractedly, softly. "Just watching the movie."

I try to, anyhow.

It's a good movie, but I can't bring myself to watch it. My eyes keep flitting away from the blue halo of the TV screen and into the back of the room.

My big, green and gold-speckled irises land on the attendance sheet at the head of the table. My eyes zoom past the tally the substitute has started to indicate the passing minutes. I can see the ink splotches where my name is printed out. I-S-A-B-E-L-LA –R.- C-U-L-L-E-N. My first birth-certificate, the one with my little foot stamped on it and issued by the State of Washington, reads "Isabella Renesmee Cullen," as have all of my documents thereafter. Once my chaotic first days of life – and the tragedies of them – had let the family think, someone thought it would be a good idea to honor my mother by naming me after her. Daddy, torn between the desire to honor her last wishes and the desire to honor _her_, never made up his mind. Sometimes, he _will_ call me Isabella, and I wonder if he's completely _there_ when he does. Without parental recognition of any name, the family turned to Emmett's simple, catchy nickname, and it stuck as my name.

Contrary to what I thought would be the case, I end up grabbing my notebook. I flip past pages of half-assed verbal conjugations and vocabulary notes, most of them accompanied by sketches of the concept in question. I open a fresh page, write the date in French, and begin to sketch.

In a lot of ways, I sketch myself.

I draw a face shaped like mine, different by imperceptible but beautiful asymmetry at the height of the cheekbones. One of them is slanted leftwards, making the cheek underneath it broader. Both of my cheeks, my contrast, rise like symmetrical, ruler-drawn lines from the same point near the bridge of the nose.

I draw a dainty, delicate pert nose, with hook-shaped nostrils. One of them is bigger than the other, making the cartilage on the tip of the nose appear rounder. I draw the ridge in between the tip of the nose and its bridge, which makes the nose look slightly upturned, more so in her face than mine.

I draw the circular path drawn by the brow bone and the cheekbone, which creates the illusion of big, round eyes. I make the left eye in this drawing imperceptibly bigger, a flaw absent in my own face. I draw a deeper-set plane where the inner-eye meets the nose. Carefully, I draw a set of thick, dark eyelashes, lighter and less well-defined like mine. Where mine are tall, black soldiers rigidly aligned, hers are willows, scattered unevenly at the end of the eyelid.

She looks exactly like I do.

To my father, who probably studied her in intricate detail, down to every last individual eyelash, the resemblance must be the most striking. Nature took all of her features and copied their distinctive traits – the shape of her upper lip as the two curves met underneath her nose, the plumper bottom lip, the imperceptible dimple at the tip of the nose, the shell of her ear – into my face.

She also looks nothing like me.

It's the root of my surprise when I feel Buzz's breath close to my neck. Earlier, he moved his chair closer to mine. I heard it scraping against the linoleum, but it did little to break my focus. I keep a picture of my parents on their wedding day on my bedside table. This, I drew from memory.

"Is that …?"

"My mother," I say, in a flat, emotionless voice. Buzz's voice is gentler than it is curious, and his nod is one of satisfaction, not an attempt to process the information to then receive more. That's what impels me to add, from somewhere deep inside my entrails, that, "She passed when I was very little."

It is common knowledge in town that my birth-parents are out of the picture; Emmett, Alice and I are siblings, adopted by Dr. Cullen and his wife. Daddy isn't anywhere in my features; the vampire my mother might have been could have undergone mitosis, except for a pair of emerald, gold-speckled eyes. Coming from my own lips and not idle gossip, it feels like very intimate information I just laid out for Buzz to see.

Buzz says nothing. What I expected was some sort of adjective to describe her, some sort of comparison to me, a statement of the obvious. Instead, Buzz squeezes my shoulder very gently with his broad palm, and shoves his chair backwards a little.

"It's interesting, watching you draw," he admits. "You make faces."

Instantly, I blush deeply. "You stick out your tongue," he tells me. He doesn't sound mocking. After seconds of processing this, I realize he sounds playful.

"You know," I reply sardonically. "My life ambition is to look like a Labradoodle."

"That sucks," he says. "You'd make a good artist."

Covertly, I smile. His statement warms me up from the inside out.

"I'd make a good anything, Hemlich," I say playfully. It embarrasses me that I actually believe it. Other than his eyes and his temper, I inherited relentless arrogance from my father. I just pray to the lord I didn't inherit the bouts of OCD, the unwavering hypochondria, maniac-depressive behavior and stalker tendencies. At this rate, though, I'm exhibiting behavior for all but one – the hypochondria, in which case I'm acting like the complete opposite.

"Especially something that needs humility, Cullen," he retorts, showing unprecedented wit. I'm actually pleasantly surprised. "Like a nun, or something."

I ask him if he's ever met Sister Caroline, the English teacher. Or the entirety of our faculty, really. The rest of the post-lunch period passes by in that surprisingly easy, witty banter.

By the end of the period, through no effort of his own, Buzz convinces me. He helps me find better reasons to go have a movie and share a milkshake, like some bad Grease musical, than to annoy my father into a premature death.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Big, big thanks to Nise7465 for all her work with this story! She is an absolutely fantastic beta (if a slightly mischievous, and tardy-prone, rabbit-like woman). She understands what that means.

Out of idle curiosity, a question to the readers:

Even though this is a Nessie-centric story, and the pairing is there by necessity - this story is about Nessie coming of age as much as it is about Nessie finding love. Jake is a big part of this story. What are your thoughts on Jake? Are you a fan?


	7. The Awkward Sweetness of the First Date

**The Awkward Sweetness of the First Date **

"I don't really see the point of all this," I tell Alice as she assembles the chair.

She, Rose and I rode to Montreal at 3:15 this afternoon. Earlier this morning, Rose covertly told me to get into the BMW. If she was aiming for speed, the Porsche would've been better. I didn't say anything, however. Firstly, Rose would've skinned me alive, and second, the "sacrifice" of speed over size made me uncomfortable. Only the foldable body of my chair fit in the trunk of the Porsche; the wheels had to go in the lowered backseat. Even tiny Alice wouldn't comfortably fit stuck in the back with my chair. While she didn't mind, it made me uncomfortable to have her riding in the back like a stowaway. With the chair comfortably in the trunk of the BMW, we rode to Montreal, where Alice's stylist, a man by the name of Jacques, styled my hair.

Alice yammered on for 30 minutes about why it was absolutely _imperative _that Jacques style my hair. Now, my mahogany hair is hanging straight - like a ramrod - from a high-ponytail, accompanied by a deflated pompadour. It looks good. According to Alice, if Jacques hadn't thoroughly hydrated it before applying heat, I'd go bald before my 100th birthday.

I doubt her reasoning.

"You could've easily – " I recline the seat and push it backwards "- done this at home - " I fling my legs out of the car, gripping the Velcro strap "- without spending more money." Comfortably in the chair, I roll away from Alice and past the hood of the car.

"It was your first date, darling," Rose says lovingly. "Of course we weren't going to spare any expenses."

Rolling my eyes, I grab the shopping bag in her hand. It contains my 'date' shoes. Much to Alice's chagrin, I can't wear stilettoes on a regular basis. It's a bit of a balance hassle when transferring in an out of the chair, and the heels get caught in the footrests. It is, I think, one of those other cruel ironies of being physically useless for all intents and purposes.

The bag in my lap contains two ankle boots covered by brown suede, with a low fat stump, by Manolo Blahnik.

I roll into the elevator and wait to be carried upstairs.

Some sort of divine intervention – and a hungry stomach – prompts me to exit the elevator in the first floor. With the bag still in my lap, I wheel to the kitchen. I grab a granola bar from one of the lowered cabinets. Keeping the opened thing clamped delicately between my teeth, I roll out of the kitchen, past the foyer, and into the living room.

"Oh, sweet lord."

I spit out the granola bar.

Over the ninety years of his vampire existence, Emmett has collected a variety of hunting trophies. The majority of them are now on display - furskins, stuffed animal heads, ivory tusks, an assortment of antlers and a motherfucking _white shark denture_. I find it a bit disgusting – like normal humans collecting apple cores and chicken bones. But of course, we're not normal. I was born into the highest concentration of criminal insanity outside a looney-bin.

Otherwise, a _horned elephant head_ would not have been hanging above the mantelpiece in the chimney.

"What the _hell_?"

Emmett is in front of the elephant, stroking the ivory horn with his sausage-like fingers, like a coach dusting his first trophy. "Isn't he beautiful?" Emmett sniffs, as though there are actual tears in his eyes, "…hunted him in Cameroon in '89 before the African Elephant was declared an endangered species by the CITES Appendix A..."

I whimper.

The idiot that is my Uncle mistakes my whimper of horror for a gasp of admiration. Encouraged, Emmett starts prattling on about the Bengal tiger hide draped across the sofa, the bear hide that has replaced the Persian rug, and the glassy-eyed deer flanking the Cameroon Elephant.

I barely register this.

"_He, he, hee, hee..._" I start to chant, spitting out bursts of air. _  
_

I start to fan myself with my hands, like a clapping, mentally-challenged seal. The air doesn't make it past my clogged, panic ridden nostrils.

"Darlin', these animals are all dead," Jasper says, popping out of nowhere, "They can't hurt you."

In his hands, Jasper cradles a goddamned 6-foot musket like a newborn baby. Only then did my anxiety-impaired eyes fall on the hunting rifle _beneath _the stuffed kill. Jasper collected guns and "taught me to shoot like the best of 'em in the Panhandle." The gun he taught me to shoot with, a classic Remington, adorns the hunting rifle, flanking it.

"Gah," I gasp in horror.

"Honey, you know how to work a gun," Jasper says in a soothing voice. "I taught you to shoot like you'd been raised in the Panhandle."

I spin around to face him so quickly the rubber tires screech like a hyena against my Nana's hardwood floors. I generally try to be careful with the chair in Nana's house. I keep the tires clean (or Emmett does, but that's a technicality). I spin it carefully around the cherry-wood. I'm careful.

Apparently, I was also needlessly considerate.

The woman has apparently lost all concern over the state of her décor. If she allowed Emmett and Jasper to turn her house into some tacky hunter's cabin owned by rich orthodontists, then I might as well have emptied my catheter's urine bag on the handsomely upholstered dining hall chairs.

To make matters worse, Jasper and his partner-in-crime had decided to bring back the 1990s boy-bands look and crank it up with style pointers from ex-cons. Dumb & Dumber are both wearing tight-fitting black shirts that hug every curve of their bodies. Emmett's muscles looked like a pile of floating boulders.

Like he's the frigging dude from My Giant.

"I'm not scared of the gun, you stupid _moron,_" I hiss furiously at Jasper, turning red in the face from an inability to breathe.

Jasper's brow furrows in confusion.

"What the hell is this?" I cry like a maniac, clawing at Jasper's black shirt like a vicious alley cat. Grabbing a fistful, I tug at it as hard as I can. My strength is such that I'm disappointed that it doesn't tear. Jasper stumbles forward more out of shock than at the force of my inertia.

"Er, I _think _it's a Ralph Lauren," Jasper says sheepishly, scratching his mop of blonde curls. "Your Aunt picked it out, I can't be –"

"Not the shirt, you _idiot_!" I wail, waving my hands like a witch cursing his bloodline. A wayward hand accidentally slapped Jasper across the shoulder. Even though it probably felt like a caress from a kitten, Jasper looks wounded. "This circus! The guns! The evidence to the fact that Emmett might be some sort of underworld animal trafficker!"

Nana has emerged from her study. "Nessie, sweetheart, I tried to tell them they were being silly…"

Dumb & Dumber stare at me like I have gone stark-raving mad. I'm red in the face, like a Pacific Red apple. My glassy green irises are ricocheting inside my eyeball, like a pinball machine gone insane. Some bizarre noise is coming out from deep in my entrails, sounding uncannily like a Lamaze class chorus.

Jasper is still in my grip, looking as terrified, as if I pose a genuine threat to his safety. Behind me, I heard my Aunts' heels clicking in a rhythmic staccato, Alice's step less forceful than Rosalie's. The second the living room came into view, their purses tumbled to the ground like a tower collapsing. Letting go of my blonde Uncle, I spin my chair towards my Aunts.

"Emmett!" Rosalie snarls, sounding more like his mother than his wife. I'm glad we're on the same page were her husband's (lack of) maturity is concerned.

"Can't you _control _your husbands?" I demandd, in a low, frosty voice.

Pointing one perfectly manicured finger, she stalks towards him, swaying her hips in the process. "I _told _you that if you made this difficult for Nessie I wouldn't sleep with you for a _week._"

"Baby!" Emmett protests. Inside, I die.

My Aunt uses sex as a tool to manipulate your Uncle. How life-affirming.

How _nasty. _

"Rose, baby, don't be like that. You know it's important..."

Holy lord in heaven, ew.

"...for the little shit to know Ness is well-protected – "

"_Well´protected_?" I screech, like an insane banshee.

Very abruptly, I'm overcome with such calm I might have been hit with a tranquilizer dart.

"If anything, he's going to see I live among criminally insane lunatics and decide to rescue me from it," I say very calmly.

When I caught my expression glistening on a glass vase, I saw my eyes look glassy, and my expression, drowsy. The fog of rage had lifted. I saw everything clearly; the stuffed animals, the weaponry, and the ridiculous t-shirts.

Suddenly, I start to laugh.

I start to laugh like a maniac, so hard tears start to fall out of my eyes and my abdomen would hurt if I could feel it. I'm laughing like Ursula in the Little Mermaid as she emerged as one whale-sized octopus from the bottom of the sea.

"Jasper, I think you overdid it," Alice says.

"No, he didn't," I said. My tone had the calm typical of insane villains as they reveal their master plan. "He just helped me realize that _obviously _Buzz shouldn't come here, that's all."

Dumb and Dumber stare at me, slack-jawed. "Darlin', that's completely inappropriate. In my day, a gentleman would – "

"This isn't 1865," I say calmly, like I have ingested three days' worth of Prozac in one go. If I ever get drunk, this is what I'm going to sound like. Or if I ever turn into a psycopath.

"Buzz _was _going to come pick me up here, but we can easily change plans. I'll just meet him at the restaurant."

I ignore the sudden sense of doubt assailing me as I roll towards the elevator, and waited for it to come down. With my Aunt's help, it wouldn't be difficult to get the ball rolling.

"See what you've done, you big oaf," Rosalie snaps at her husband, slamming her palm against his shoulder. It sounded like thunder clapping.

In the meantime, Alice nestled herself behind the chair, accompanying me upstairs while promising to upbraid Jasper. I was thankful she didn't mention anything about withholding sex. It's bad enough to hear Emmett protesting on behalf of the "health of the Bold Avenger."

Mother of god.

It is 6:00 PM. It is exactly an hour before Buzz is scheduled to pick me up.

With Alice's help, it takes little to no time to get dressed, into an emerald-colored corduroy dress and thick stockings. There was no way I was exposing my bare legs. My apprehension has nothing to do with the weather. While Rose bickers with her husband, Alice puts finishing touches on my hair and smothered my lips with gloss.

"You should stop biting your lips," Alice scolds me for the umpteenth time. "Their shape is gorgeous and the color is lovely. I shouldn't have to put gloss on them." Because of all the lip biting, they looked more pale than pink, dotted with grass-like patches of skin. Since I get the same remark at least twice every day, I just laugh.

I laugh apprehensively, aiming to hide the fact that I'm growing anxious. Sweaty palms gripping the comforter, I wait for Alice to finish applying the gloss. Now that Jasper is too busy hijacking Rose's volatile emotions, my own emotions are flying off the handle.

The main one is _relief, _battling short-lived irritation. Sure, Rose would drop me off, avoiding the first moment of awkwardness. Then what? Although Buzz hasn't said anything about the location of the restaurant, I know the plan is to go out to dinner and then to watch a movie. Over the past five nights, I'd been running over different scenarios in my head. Very few of them didn't end with death-inducing awkwardness.

Most of restaurants in the area spaced out their tables, which meant I didn't have a hard time maneuvering my chair through them. But what if he took me to one of the cozier, fancier places, stuffed with tables? The issue wasn't that it would be impossible to clear a path out for my chair. It was the stifling awkwardness that would result from the cumbersome, awkward process of clearing it out. Nearly every restaurant in the area didn't have a wheelchair ramp, and those that did didn't have them over each and every little step. "Accessible" doesn't mean "easily-usable for wheelchairs." "Accessible" means "I complied with a couple of the requirements necessary to accommodate one." It means I stuck some metal bars on a regular-sized toilet seat.

At some point, Buzz would have to pop a wheelie for me. I'd tried to calm my nerves by telling myself that he'd insist on pushing me anyway, but Buzz had never pushed me outside the length of St. Marge's lengthy, flattened out hallways.

I'd accepted to go on this date to prove to myself Buzz could find me desirable. By the end of it, I was going to be as desirable as a 90-year-old with saggy tits and flatulence.

In short, in any of the restaurants I could think of, getting in with a wheelchair was like pulling teeth. Mr. Hemlich's contempt-ridden stare kept flitting past my brain, like a relentless alarm clock. The cranky old man reminded me that not even his clueless grandson would escape how incredibly _annoying _it was to go out with a wheelchair. Overall, it helped my attitude that I didn't know what it was like to _not _go out with one. At first, my family had used strollers, then a kiddie wheelchair, and then an adult one.

Frustration suddenly bubbled over, so intensely tears started to prickle my eyes as Alice finished putting my shoes on.

"Is everything OK, Nessie?" Alice asks, as she rises from helping me put my shoes on.

"Yeah," I lie through gritted teeth, wiping tears off aggressively with my fist. "I'm just pissed at Emmett and Jasper."

"Their stunt downstairs wasn't going to work," she tells me with a wink, tapping her forehead with one of her dainty fingers. "Trust me."

I snort. "You're lying."

"I'd never lie," she promises. "Everything is going to be fine."

* * *

"How was your _date_?" my best friend says, grimacing at the last word. He hands me a homemade Cherry coke and sticks a bucket of M&Ms between the two of us. Simon and I are in his house, at a sort of den in the garage. I've never seen the rest of the house; there's a veritable flight of stairs from both, the garage and the porch to the main foyer. The two of us bonded over a mutual love of the Rolling Stones and the Dire Straits. Ever since, I've been coming over to listen to his father's vintage tapes of MTV from the 80s or play Guitar Hero on a Wii Console as old as I am.

I take a yellow M&M and stick it in my mouth. "It wasn't a _date_," I say, matching his expression by wrinkling my nose. "We just went out for dinner and had a movie."

Simon snorted. "Didn't the Barbies teach you that's _exactly _what a date is?"

He calls my "sisters" 'the Barbies', with a touch of contempt. However, the Barbies earned every last iota of it, especially Rosalie. While she is thrilled about my "blooming relationship" with Buzz, she _hates _Simon with a passion. She looks at him the same way he looks at bell-boys and waitresses – like their insects that saturate the air with bacteria just by breathing it. To add to that, she says she finds Simon a bad influence, even though she can't ignore that Buzz inhales more pot smoke than air. In fact, she _gushed _over how Joshua Lee Bloomberg had 'glanced at me' even though the boy – massive inheritance and movie-industry pedigree aside – is an alcoholic in the making.

Simon grimaces.

"It's not like that," I say. I've been saying that to everyone – myself, especially.

For most of the date, I felt like I was stuck in some re-enactment of the _Lady and the Tramp_. I dreaded the moment in which Buzz was going to use spaghetti as means to unite our lips into a sloppy, canine kiss. The more the evening progresses, the less disgusting the _idea _of kissing him seemed.

Away from the influx of emotions of the evening… that scares me.

The kiss itself, I think, would have been kind of unromantic. There's marinara sauce from the boneless chicken wings decorating his upper-lip like a Stalinesque mustache. He ordered garlic bread, and the scent of that clung to his mouth. Unfortunately for me, my breath smells delectably and has the same effect as general anesthesia even if I eat fried garlic.

Buzz didn't share my luck. Behind us, there's was lady in her 60s that brought clean-shaven, prehistoric Maltese. The pooch looked like a wet rat, and has the breath of one. I didn't want my first kiss to happen next to a prune-like old lady declaring her undying love to a flatulent dog. I dreaded the moment Buzz would try to break the distance, and kiss me like the stray mutt in said movie.

A weird expression crosses Simon's face. "What did you guys do? Watch the Super Bowl and eat BBQ ribs?" A cackle of contempt and glee follows his statement.

I scowl at him.

"The super-bowl happens on a Sunday, dumbass."

I don't know how I feel about the date.

If Buzz and I did end up talking about sports for most of the date, that was _my _fault. Buzz took bait. As for the menu and location, Simon wasn't far off the mark. Buzz took me to the _Applebee's _near the former bridge at Crown Point. The fact that we did eat boneless chicken wings and mozzarella sticks for my first date is stopped mattering. What ended up mattering is that Buzz picked the only restaurant next to a historical monument. We watched the sun set over the bridge at Crowne Point as the as the sun went down and he moon went up. Buzz reserved the booth nearest to the Crown Point bay. It matters that he thought this date thoroughly, to the point of asking the manager to put a wheelchair ramp over the five inch step between the entrance and our booth. It made me smile. To greet me, he gave me a goofy kind of kiss on the cheek, a sweet kind of kiss on the cheek, not the cocky kind he forces on me at school. It was more of a question than a statement, an offer more than an imposition.

"He took me to a restaurant," I say simply. Against my will, the sparkle in my eyes betrays me. A delicate blush graces the hollows under my cheeks, turning the pale pink underneath them a dark rose. I bite back a smile, embarrassed and giggly altogether.

Simon grunts. Rather forcefully, he stuffs a fistful of M&Ms into his mouth. For a couple of minutes, I tilt my head to the side, studying him. Simon's expression is stone as he picks out a song to play on the Wii. He picks out _Black Magic Woman. _I snort, but inside… I'm reeling.

"I'm not inspiring the song choice, am I?" I try to sound playful, but my expression is tentative and hurt.

Simon cracks a small smile. "Nah," he says, still focused on the screen and on hitting the notes. Once he's done, he turns his head towards me and gives me a gentler, playful smile. "Don't toot your own horn, Cullen."

He gets a fairly high score on the game, hitting nearly all the notes. "Aw," I mock. "Look at that score. It's incredibly low."

"Must be hard to hang out with such a loser, for you, huh?" he says this with such bite in his voice that it stings like a jab.

"You're still my best friend," I say, playful tone turning serious. It sounds like a plea.

Imperceptibly, his lips twitch upwards.

"I know, home-bitch," Simon teases, giving me a wink. It's a silly nickname he came up with when I said I was his home-girl. And then, he's had good reason to turn it to "home-bitch."

"Your turn," he says, handing me the guitar. It's a bit awkward to position myself; I'm propped up by a couple of pillows, to keep my back straight and my hips in place.

I still beat him with my score when I finish playing _La Grange by ZZ Top. _ "This is my favorite song, you know," I inform him.

"No, it's not," he says matter-of-factly, with a snort. "Your favorite song comes from the _Tangled _soundtrack." Simon's lips are bursting with laughter even as he tries to keep his face straight.

I wrinkle my nose.

Finally, he laughs at me. I blush because it's true. A laugh bursts out of my mouth.

"My favorite song to _play_," I correct him. "You know, for this game…" Playfully, I tap all of my dainty fingers on the guitar strings. I giggle again.

Taking off the plastic guitar, I pop another red M&M in my mouth.

"You're such a racist with your M&Ms," Simon comments.

I stick out the tip of my tongue at him. Behind that tip, the chocolate is melting. "And yet you stick pre-pick all of the red ones for me out of the packet."

For my birthday, Simon got me a bunny stuffed with Red M&Ms. He put a bracelet on her stuffed paw, one that I'm still wearing even though it gets caught on the wheels of my chair if I'm not careful. Once I finished the M&Ms, he took me to Build-a-Bear to fill it up with actual stuffing.

I've climbed out of my chair and am sitting near him in the couch. Freed from the constraints of arm-rests and wheels, I stretch out my neck to give him a peck on the cheek. Underneath my lips, his dimple sinks in as his face breaks into a smile. It isn't spontaneous, but I drag my body closer, arms moving useless hips, until I'm curled around him.

My head is on his chest. Simon's chest starts pounding, hard, presumably from having vampire off-spring approaching. My legs dangle from the couch.

With his heart drumming in his chest, he wraps an arm around me. As we breathe in sync, his heartbeat slows.

"When are you getting picked up?" he suddenly asks, in a contented, lazy tone.

"At my earliest convenience," I say with a wry smile. "Although for all we know Emmett is out there with night-visors and an Extendable Ear." Simon shudders imperceptibly, and I smile fondly, curling around this boy that went past three abusive vampires to hang out with me. My head is on his chest.

Underneath my head, his chest trembles. Simon laughs with more gusto than I find polite, but I'm glad he finds me funny.

"Speaking of which, how did your brothers do with this new _dating _habit of yours?" Simon bursts into taunting laughter. I hear the gentle rubbing of his hand on the fabric of my jacket. If he were pushing down harder, my body would mistake it for gentle pressure.

Mortified, I smack him lightly across the chest. "It wasn't a date!" I repeat vehemently. I try to sit up straight, but he tightens his grip.

That phrase is becoming to me what "That's all Folks," is to Bugs Bunny.

"Uh huh," Simon cackles, giving me a funny look. Then he lets out another robust laugh.

"We were _hanging out_," I repeat. "Like you and I hang out. Except, you know, with a lot more touchy-touchy gestures on his part," I add, with a sound between a fond giggle and a derisive snort.

Simon bristles.

"Nessie…he didn't…he didn't _force _anything on you?" Simon chokes out, tightening his arms around me. I find his hand on my arm, trembling with anger, but caressing my arm with the greatest gentleness. I give it a squeeze.

"Do you think he'd still be walking around if he had?" I say. "Actually, he was a complete gentleman."

So to speak.

* * *

Dinner was lovely.

The movie was, too.

It was the in-between that has me in doubt.

Outside the restaurant, all my blood went to my face like it had the hematological structure of a penis_. _If I had been one, I would've been suffering from one of those painfully, abnormally long erections.

Buzz ruined progress made at the dinner portion of the soiree so quickly it made my head spin. From the second I saw the monstrosity of his truck, I realized he'd have to help me into the car. The seat was raised too high. I spun out of his grasp, wheeling fast towards the vehicle in spite of the slush crusted underneath my chair wheels. I locked the brakes, waiting. With terminally-ill enthusiasm, Buzz opened the door to the car.

Once that was done, we lapsed into awkward silence.

Buzz broke it. "Can you… or do you…?"

"I can't," I said, looking down into my lap. Sardonically, I was praising his intelligence inside my head.

Another awkward, nine-months-pregnant, pause. "I mean, I usually can if the seat is level with this," I blubbered on, blushing, tapping the seat on my chair. I'm usually strapped to it by a lap belt, to keep my hips positioned all the way to the back. I had taken it off underneath the table, at the restaurant.

As I blubbered on, I watched in horrified slow motion.

"Right," Buzz said, nearly clapping like Mary Poppins about to clean the nursery. "Alright then, let's…"

"Uh…" I said stupidly, at a loss for words, elbows resting on the armrests. Buzz walked towards me, lodging his feet underneath my footrests.

He snuck his bulging biceps – four times the size of my own skinny arms – underneath my shoulders, hooking me to him. "Uh, eh, Buzz- …"

I squealed loudly as I was lifted into the air.

I found myself pressed hard against Buzz Hemlich's sculpted abs. Engulfed by the natural scent of them – not the bucket of cologne he dumped on his neck - I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, I was also hanging like a pendulum from a clock, dead weight, underarms pressed to his biceps.

I squealed again as Buzz lifted me further up. My head was nestled in between Buzz's shoulder blades and his head. He smelled like an inch's worth of chocolate-scented Axe and cologne. Like a Wal-mart aisle. Engulfed by that scent, I started to cough. I could see the ground, and I was suddenly well-aware of my legs crumbling underneath me, caught on the raised footrests.

"Eh, uh…Sorry," Buzz says sheepishly.

I started to laugh. A ton of trilling giggles, like the sound of a bell, burst out of my mouth. Laughing. At how ridiculous I we must've looked. At how unromantically romantic the moment was.

Then he killed it.

"Could you, eh, move a little towards the car seat?" Buzz asked, mortified. I could feel his cheek pressed against my hair and earlobe, burning with his blush and rough with his stubble.

"Honey, if I could, we wouldn't be having this problem."

"Crap," he muttered. "Eh, I…Uh…"

I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Buzz, you need to grab my ass."

_There's a sentence I thought I'd _never_ say. _

It's kind of an unimaginable scenario. My ass, by necessity, is married to a costumed-design cushion designed to distribute and reduce pressure on it. Emmett, Jasper and Daddy help me with this all the time, but they do it so often and so professionally that I hadn't thought about it until now.

"Really?!" Buzz asked excitedly, as though as if I was Ed fucking McMahon with a fucking check.

"Please don't wet yourself," I said dryly.

Buzz dropped my shoulders.

I squawked like an entire chicken coop but together.

I felt my body crumble backward and downwards without any support. If I plopped down on the chair like that, I'd tip it over, anti-tippers aside. Claws out, like a cat, I latched onto his shoulders, probably digging into the hardened, sculpted flesh.

Buzz didn't seem to mind. When his hands presumably found my butt-cheeks – it's not like I could tell -, he _moaned _like I was a freaking pint of Ben & Jerry's.

I was being _groped_, and by the look on his face, Buzz Hemlich was enjoying it.

_God, if you're up there, you have an interesting sense of humor. _

As my body was shifted to the side of the car, guided to it by Buzz's hands on my ass, I started laughing.

As if dancing with a log of wood, Buzz spun me around.

Then I banged my head on the SUV of his car-seat. My laughter died. _Lord almighty. Without support, my legs dangled and my torso crumbled like an accordion. I was being held up like dirty underwear – I hung on by a thread._

"Oh, god, Nessie, can't you….squat down?" Buzz whispered in mortified horror, the smirk wiped off his face.

"Again," I said through clenched teeth. "If I could, we wouldn't be having this problem."

I can duck my head and shoulders, not squat down and in. That involves a movement of the torso, and the capacity to stand on two feet.

"Oh, yeah, right," Buzz mumbled dumbly. His cheeks flamed pink. Buzz dropped one of my butt-cheeks to grab on to my shoulders. Squawking as I felt the fall, I threw my arms around him like a vice around his neck.

"Buzz, put me down," I choked. Engulfed by his scent, I started to feel dizzy.

"I'm trying," Buzz pleaded, whimpering. Like a dumb baby playing with blocks and square pegs, he persisted. Hands hooked around my hips, he swung me around the same way.

"Ouch!" I yelped, more for the sake of appearances than pain as my head hit the doorjamb. At this point, a normal human would have been developing a little purple Mount Everest on their forehead.

"In my chair!"

As if working with a human-sized pendulum, Buzz swung my body to the side. Once I was positioned above the chair – as per his estimation – he dropped my rock-hard ass.

_Oh, lord. _For a second, I clung to him for dear life, arms wrapped around his neck.

Slowly, my hands found my armrests, and I lowered myself into the chair. It wasn't the best position; half of my ass was floating in the air, knees bent forward and twisted awkwardly. I scooted my hands backwards and pushed upwards, dragging myself backwards into the chair. Positioning myself was easier – incredibly so – with Rose to help me do it. Buzz stared at me curiously.

"So, eh…" Oh, god. I took a deep breath. "First, we do this – " I swung the footrests and armrests quickly out of the way,

"- and then you place your hands under my…eh, _ass_ –"

I turned the red color of the flag.

- and then I'll wrap my arms around you…" _There's another phrase I thought I'd never say. _

Buzz's face was overcome with misplaced tenderness.

I'm mortified. It's like all of it – grabbing my ass and the bodily contact - is a bad rehearsal of a crappy romantic comedy.

Or soft-core porn.

* * *

Simon and I decide to go watch a movie, a romantic comedy we'll end up making fun of. I chose not to watch the same movie with Buzz, lest he get any bright ideas. Instead, Buzz and I watched a movie about a pandemic. Somehow, he still found the ambiance romantic, and my hand found itself occupied with slapping his advances away. This'll be fun.

Because my chair doesn't fit on Simon's Mini-Cooper, we ride a pick-up truck his grandfather used to own, for driving him and his mother to their ranch in New York. They own a business down there. I find it a bit strange, the idea of Eastern Europeans owning an Old-West style establishment. It's like Dr. Shah, a colleague of Carlisle's, owning a Taco Bell franchise. From what I've heard, the tacos taste like curry.I don't judge any of them because my family owns stock in food companies and in Yum!, the mother-ship for Pizza Hut.

Miss Enescu, the former Mrs. Lowell, drives an SUV that would fit my chair better. However, she is always out of the house – she's a teacher of European Studies, specializing in the Soviet Union and former satellite states at a local college. I've never met her, or Simon's grandfather. From what I've heard (and glimpsed) of him, Mr. Enescu – Simon's grandfather – is not the most welcoming of men.

I haven't met him. Even after all these years, he has to speak in his village dialect to Simon.

After parking the chair next to the pick-up truck, I swing the footrest away. Rather expertly, my best friend squats down and sticks his hands under my butt. I push down on the armrests to lift myself up into the air. Simon, unlike my family or even Buzz, needs that extra help. This time, it takes us only two tries to manage enough leverage to get me up into the seat.

"Wow," I beam. Legs still dangling down, I squeeze one of his biceps. It's harder under my grip. "Somebody's been working out," I say, with a wink.

"Shut up, Ness," Simon mumbles, the entirety of his face turning red. I laugh as I grab my legs by the Velcro strap and fling them into the car. Expertly, he breaks down the chair and stows it away in the trunk. The truck is old – Simon's money comes from the Mr. Lowell side of things. The truck was also adapted with hand-controls, since Mr. Enescu had been suffering the effects of a busted hip up until last September. Hungrily, almost licking my lips, I stare at the hand-controls.

A curtain is flung open. Mr. Enescu peers down from what I presume is the kitchen window. He is man with deep-set wrinkles, thick, bushy eyebrows and a tuft of white hair. His dark eyes turn beady when he spots me in the passenger seat of his former truck. With one hand, he raps roughly on the window pane. He waves us. Nervous, I wave back at him.

Simon groans in irritation, glowering in the old man's direction before driving away. I waited to get onto the highway, turning on the radio.

"My brothers were _so bad._"

Now _I _turn red with anger, burying my face in my hand at the sheer force of the memory. I start telling him the story, suddenly struck by laughter. My belly shakes, and I have a hard time breathing through the laughter at certain bits of the story. He laughs, too, smirking the entire way to the movie theater. Immediately, he drives to the handicapped parking spots.

"Did you bring the Hangman dangly thingy?"

I'm sure the dangly-thingy has a name. I've always called it that, especially when I was little. The handicapped sign looks like a hangman drawing. That's how I drew my stick figure when I was little, with a big ribbon on top of the head to indicate I was a girl.

"I did," I say, sticking my hand in the front pocket of my jean. I hang it from his rearview mirror.

We both quickly realize that the dangly thingy is not going to do us any good – which happens very often. All of the handicapped parking spaces, all _seven _of them, are taken.

"Goddammit," Simon spits under his breath.

"Shh," I soothe, rubbing his arm.

He takes a calming breath. Breathy, Simon grabs two fistfuls of his hair and pulls them up. He looks like a baby girl with two pigtails. I laugh.

He turns to look at me like I've gone crazy, too. "I'm sorry," I say, fighting to control my laughter. "I'm laughing because of how your hair is sticking up – "

Simon tilts his head towards the rearview mirror; his tufts of honey-colored hair look like horns. "Oh," he says, blushing. He pats them down.

I laugh again "People are such _idiots,_" he spits, driving away from the taken spots.

"Nah," I say breezily. "Inconsiderate is more like it."

Very gently, I rub his bicep, starting to bulge under my touch. He relaxes a little. Tone lightening, I add, "I bet you six out of those seven cars don't have a hangman thingy."

Simon snorts derisively. "You have a very misguided opinion of people," he says.

"What if a couple of them are elderly?" I suggest.

"You don't have the hangman dangly thingy, you don't get to park on the spot where he's painted."

"In your opinion," I say. I point to a spot a hundred feet away. "Park back there. There isn't that much distance between that spot and the wheelchair ramp, and there's space for us to unload."

Simon grunts but does as I say. Muttering curses and utterances about the dipshits in this town, he puts my chair back together and holds it out. Quickly, he helps me out of the chair – with the help of his tantrum, he seems stronger. Rougher in his movements, he levers me into my chair. Together, we make our way, parallel to the cars. He stands behind me, like a protective sentinel, to shield me from the careless traffic.

Up the wheelchair ramp, I spin in the direction of the illegally parked cars. I fish out my iPhone from the pack hanging from the back of my chair. "Look at this," I say with glee, grinning slyly. I approach the first car, and manage to angle my phone to take a picture of its front. There is no sticker to be found in the monster-like truck. I take a picture of its plates.

"Look at what, Ness?" he asks of me grumpily.

"It's an app," I say cheerfully. "You send pictures of cars that are parked illegally in handicapped spots, and from there it goes to the police. They send out tickets at their discretion."

I have a lingering suspicion someone in my family invested on the app, to keep the rest of them from doing vigilante justice. I wouldn't put it past Rose, Emmett and Jazz to key the cars of people they find parked illegally. Emmett and Jasper have been nearly arrested for _assault _because they get so aggressive about my rights. As much as being crippled and stuck in the damn chair mortifies me, I don't subscribe to their methods.

Simon brightens up. "That's actually kind of cool."

He walks around me, hand casually brushing the back of my neck. Simon's become so much taller over the past couple of weeks that his fingertips barely brush the nape of my neck if he doesn't squat down. "That's five out of seven parked illegally," Simon calls out. "You wanna take pictures of all of them?"

Smiling cockily, I fold my hands across my lap. "You should take them. You owe me from losing that bet."

* * *

The most awkward stretch of my first date with Buzz hadn't yet ended. We found ourselves staring at each other, as if engaged in a blushing contest, a long _minute _after he managed to get me into the seat. It was the first time he saw my legs just _dangling _so, useless and crippled. It suddenly felt very intimate to lift them up by the Velcro strap and into the car seat. Another beat of awkward silence followed. Buzz stared at my wheelchair, atop the pavement, like a 3rd grader reading Shakespeare.

Shame suddenly flared up me like a firecracker bursting, my face heating up an iota or too. "Er…does that thing…er…?"

Irritated – he sounded like Ron fucking Weasley talking about He Who Must Not Be Named - , I stretched out one long arm. With it, I spun the wheelchair around, gripping one of the handles. Almost effortlessly, I lifted it up into the air. I grasped a grab bar at the bottom of the backrest, and popped off the wheels with the other hand.

"Put this in the trunk," I grumbled at my aspiring lover, holding out the tire to him. Slack-jawed, he bridged the distance between us, as if approaching a dangerous animal. He took the wheels. Roughly, I folded the back down, so that it pressed against to the chair seat. At that point, Buzz seemed to have forgotten the "chair" portion of "wheelchair." With my folded chair still in midair, Buzz opened the driver seat's door and nearly started driving.

"Eh…uh…Buzz?"

Awkwardness permeated the air for multiple long minutes. Silence stretched madly. Buzz was sweating bullets, his blue eyes spinning back and forth, mouth curled into an apologetic grimace.

"Oh, god, Ness," he apologized, agonized profusely. "Oh, my god, I'm sorry. Oh, god…"

Out of politeness, I didn't roll my eyes. There are two types of people in the world: the people that don't notice the wheelchair-bound to the point of being _rude_, and the people that apologize for brushing the chair with a finger, as though as the contraption was a terminally-ill, four-foot old lady.

To encourage that he become neither, I muster all the patience in my handicapped little body.

"Don't worry about it." I give him my sweetest, friendliest, most _chill_ smile.

Annoyed, I lifted the chair across my lap like the invincible Hulk. A couple of minutes pass as I try to squeeze the thing through the gap between our two large seats.

It wasn't working.

When I finally chanced a peek at Buzz, my cheeks blazing, I found him gazing at me with pure, undiluted pity. My own cheeks burned with rage and shame. I stuck the chair outside again and unfold it. Ever creatively persistent and persistently creative, I squeezed the back portion through the slit in between us. Then I squeezed in the seat portion, making a zig-zag with my chair.

"You can take it out from the backseat when we get there," I said, my tone lightened by my beam of satisfaction. Buzz nodded at me like I was barking orders in Mandarin Chinese.

It irritated me.

"Drive!" I said, biting back the urge to snap my fingers at him.

The first five minutes of the drive stretched on in a horrible awkwardness, my stomach sinking. This was the first time he's been confronted with the reality of a girlfriend in a wheelchair, and he's not doing well. His face is contorted in a mixture of mortification and pity.

I kept praying that the earth would swallow me whole. _Hi, God. Ah… You and I don't, eh, talk to each other. I don't know if this is how, this is eh, supposed to go…_What if God was more like Brahman? Or Zeus, or something? What if I was offending whatever the hell is up there, by referring to it as the God of the Bible?

_I don't actually… _I don't actually believe in God, either – not in a meddlesome, bearded man up in the air with a bunch of winged babies. _Well, anyway, my father, Edward…and his father, Carlisle especially, say you're kind of cool and that I should, eh, talk to you. Ah, well… Regardless…Whoever you are…Could you eh, make this be less awkward? If you really can do all things? _

For a split-second, I embraced the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior. God had answered my prayers, because Buzz opened his mouth. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

Or not.

_Oh, shit_, I thought, stomach sinking. Slowly, he put one hand on my thigh, and began rubbing gently. Dread boiled up my blood. He was going to ask how my 'chair and I ended up shaking together, in a bond more permanent than marriage. I was sure of it. However, I couldn't exactly ruin his content existence by telling him I was mauled by a brutal monster.

When we first moved here, I thought it would be funny to tell people I was mauled by pit-bull. Nobody – not even Emmett – saw the fun in that. Personally, I thought a sick, warped man like Jacob Black would be horrified at the thought of being compared to an animal that relatively small. I'm convinced he's one of those psychos with issues with their strength and masculinity. For somebody to maul a newborn baby, he'd have to have serious issues with size, strength and self-confidence. In my head, all of those things add up to a small wiener. _Big gun, small wiener_, I think.

"Car accident," I said flatly, with the tone I use to give him the answers for Math homework.

Buzz blushed. I found it a strange reaction to an admission of a crippling accident, as carelessly as it was delivered. "I'm sorry," he said sweetly, squeezing my hand. The pity was gone, replaced by genuine empathy. "Drunk drivers really are idiots."

I shrugged facetiously. My kind of idiot wasn't _drunk_, which in retrospect made it worse. "At least it wasn't deliberate," I said matter-of-factly. "It was an accident."

If only Buzz knew how _un-accidental _it was, how deliberately Black mauled me.

Buzz whistled. "That's very…_gracious _of you," he finally said, blue eyes wide with amazement. I shrugged again. Where Jacob Black was concerned, even the mild attitude of contempt I sometimes managed, in the stead of blinding hatred and paralyzing fear, was _beyond_ gracious.

"I mean, what's done is done," I said, my voice roughening with real, legitimate bitterness, "it's not like hating the person in question is going to make any of it go away."

I paused, struck by the recognition of logical wisdom in a truth formulated but not accepted.

"Right," he said quietly. "He did take a lot away from you, though."

With the sad part being, I don't _miss_ it because I never had it. I yearn for it like a bittersweet longing. Rather, I _yearn _for treatment of some sort. If I had _any _other condition, my chances of getting out of the wheelchair would be higher. "I mean, it happened when I was very young," I say breezily, my voice more contemplative than bitter. "I was a baby – practically happened right as I was leaving the hospital."

Buzz flinched. I continued on. I shrugged my shoulders. "I mean, it sucks. Sucks balls. Biggest pain in my ass, don't get me wrong. But it's not like my life is any less fulfilling because of it, you know?"

Looking unconvinced, appeasing above all else, Buzz nodded. From the corner of his eye, he started to look at me with a sweet sort of pity, a tender kind of pity.

It makes my cheeks flame because it's so _sweet _even as it is more irritating than a horny, bored Emmett.

I don't like explaining the _damn chair I'm confined to_. It's demeaning the chair's significance to call it just a "pain in the ass." It's a more much nuanced conversation than that. It's not the type of conversation I'm not going to have with Buzz Hemlich because he bought me mozzarella sticks while looking at a pretty bridge.

"Sure," Buzz says carefully, with a voice like he's treading on eggshells. I tense immediately. "I guess you can do everything."

His tone sounds strange _sheepish. _I bristle immediately, narrowing my eyes.

I don't feel like elaborating on the nuances to that question, especially because the past 15 minutes have re-defined awkwardness on fifty different levels.

Again, Buzz took the awkwardness up a notch.

"Can you…can you have…can you have sex?"

I made a "_Huh_," noise like he just punched me in the stomach with his big, beefy hand. That was the 'personal question' he wanted to ask – I'm so _dumb. _I've been asked that "personal question" since my tits grew in, by a wide assortment of perverts at public spaces. Even Granddaddy, famous for legendary control, _flipped _out so much when he heard that once that he slammed the man in question against a wall.

"You're going to do more than buy me a couple of appetizers at Applebee's before you get the answer to that question," I snapped slyly.

"Ness, baby, don't get mad," Buzz pleaded desperately, his voice sheepish. "I was just curious."

At that point, jumping out of the car seemed like a very desirable option. "Do I ask you how often you wank?" I snap crudely, the perpetual blush coloring my cheeks turning into the red of rage.

I wish it was only out of lady-like prudery prompting me to say that. It wasn't. My answer – or lack thereof – stemmed from a lack of knowledge. I have _no idea. _There aren't many resources out there on sexuality for women with paralysis, and I dread the idea of asking my personal physician.

"Hey, grandpa, I know the pussy's intact, but would the roll in the hay be the same?" If the dreaded answer is a flat "No," I don't want to talk to him about re-defining my sexuality as a wheelchair-bound woman. "Well, my darling, you can…_engage your partner's phallic region without penetrative coitus_." I can just picture him choking on those words.

Even as I blushed, a _chortle _flew out of my mouth.

"What's so funny?" Buzz asked, a curious smile on his lips.

"Just thinking about…" I smile, wryly, blushing just at the thought of _asking, _and at the thought of my grandfather's prudery.

"Nothing," I finally said, with one final burst of laughter.

Buzz smiled. The gesture touched my grizzly-irritable heart. "You have a nice laugh."

A beat passed as my stomach leaped into my chest.

"Really?" I asked, excited, face lighting up in every corner.

"No, I mean, I was genuinely curious, honey," he said softly. "About what it's like to live in the…you know, in the…"

"Wheelchair," I offered.

In a loud, sweeter voice, I quoted Hermione Granger. "Fear of the name is only going to increase fear of the thing itself." It's not like Voldemort is going to pop out of thin air, conjured by the mention of my hermit crab-slash-chair.

Silence stretched on, taut and uncomfortable, until I broke it.

"What do you want to know?" I sound different, like a sweeter version of the bitter old harpy I've been regaling him with.

"What it's like," Buzz explained, sweetly and sheepishly, with a shrug. Underneath his stubble-covered cheeks, there's a pool of blood, much like mine.

"Well," I say contemplatively, my tone light. "Some things are harder than they would be if I could just get up and do it – like, getting up from the couch to get popcorn. But where it gets really hard and frustrating is when I can't use my chair to do things."

So I told Buzz about everything – about things to low too reach, like toilet paper rolls in handicapped-accessible bathrooms. I told him about narrow doorjambs and high doorknobs, about raised counters, and the lesser of two evils - lowered counters without space for the chair. I told him about stairs without accompanying ramps, which regardless of their height and number, were still stairs. I told him of unfortunately placed grab bars. I told him about blocked entryways, streets without ramps, and holes in the pavement. I told him about cramped furniture, shops and restaurants. I told him about "handicapped-accessible bathrooms right up the stairs." I told him about revolving doors. I told him about the time I tried to lift myself up into a raised stool and ended up lodged on a countertop. I told Buzz about people parking in handicapped parking spaces. By the end of it, I was laughing. Tentatively, he was laughing, too.

In spite of my lecture, our arrival to the mall wasn't free of awkwardness. Alice, god bless her heart, had stuffed a handicapped hangy thingy in the pocket of my pea coat. Wordlessly, I stuck it underneath Buzz's rearview mirror. Buzz pleasantly surprised me.

"I guess this wheelchair thing does have its peaks," he said, with apprehensive playfulness. I was so touched by his openness.

I response, I gave him a smile that extends from dimple to dimple, eyes sparkling.

When he lifted me back into my chair, my guard crumbled. I let him bridge the distance between us to gently kiss the tip of my nose, and brush his lips on that dangerous line between it and my lips.


End file.
